Generally, companies face high churn and attrition due to their inability to form high-value relationship with customers. However, in today’s digital world, prospects and customers transmit thousands of indicators about what is important to them via tweets, posts, comments, reviews, and more. Finding insightful nuggets in all this data is central to establish deep relationships with customers. Aggregating all the information in one centralized system that allows more targeted, contextualized, and personalized interactions throughout every touchpoint makes this more possible. I discussed this previously in “Building Brand Loyalty: Expanding CRM to Create a Delightful Customer Experience.”
It is also important to cultivate a community of loyal customers and fans. This group is the most valuable because they provide valuable input and serve as advocates to others. We all know how important it is to build trust but most firms struggle with doing so. Customer do not typically trust brands but instead go to their peers for guidance. But if companies can build trust amongst a small group of customers, these individuals then bring in new prospects via word-of-mouth.