Top 5 Customer Service Links of the Week: Loyalty

by Heidi Miller, Social Media Manager

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Grab a cup of coffee, sit back and enjoy the five best customer service posts from the last week. On me. 🙂 This week, it’s all about loyalty: how to boost it, commit to it and see benefit and profit from it:

• 7 ways to boost brand loyalty through customer service is a great overall post on the ROI aspect. In particular, #7, “Don’t sell to customers; give them a reason to buy.”
• Bruce Temkin sets the tone for 2010 in his excellent blog post, Ten Customer Experience Resolutions for 2010, including “We shall communicate more clearly with customers across all channels” and “We shall treat customer service as a loyalty-driver, not a cost center”
• And in line with that last resolution, Ann All pointed out Why most customer service sucks, showing the level of frustration that can occur when organizations don’t provide a consistent experience across all channels
• To consider the benefits of customer loyalty: Christopher Musico reported on the Strativity Group study showing that 40% of customers are willing to pay 10% more to continue purchasing from companies delivering great customer experiences
• To wrap it all up, read Customers long for real people instead of automated customer phone lines as a cautionary tale. It’s not that everyone hates IVRs;
  automation can be very helpful for certain tasks, such as flight status
  updates and billing information. Lesson to take away from this article:
  be thoughtful about the customer experience when deciding which tasks
  to automate.