Customer Relationship Auditing – how to increase customer satisfaction, customer relationships and loyalty

Revenue comes from clients and customers, yet most companies do not systematically and methodically check or assess their relationships to ensure appropriate company policies and procedures are in place and being adhered to. That is where we can help. We audit your relationships identifying where they are strong and where they need to improve. With this information you can enhance your relationship increasing wallet share, loyalty, revenue, and market reputation while reducing dissatisfaction, customer churn, defections, and bad word of mouth advertising.

We audit relationships to increase customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. In face-to-face interviews we talk to your key clients or customers and ask them what they want from their ideal supplier. We then ask them how well you are performing against their needs.

This identifies the gap between what your clients or customers want and what you are giving them.

• If the gap is positive it means you are meeting or exceeding their needs, which helps create customer loyalty.
• If the gap is negative it means you are not meeting their needs, which means they could defect to the competitor if a better offer presented itself. It also identifies where you must focus to retain that customer.

Competitor Analysis

We also measure your competitors. We measure how well each of your competitors are meeting your clients needs. From this you can identify overall how strong or weak your competitors are and determine in which area they are strongest. We also ask for wallet share percentages for you and your competition so you can identify the potential size of that client or customer. We can measure your performance against specific competitors or allow your clients to tell us who else they are dealing with, or a combination of the two.

Your competitive advantages

What is the use of having a competitive advantage if your client does not understand it or doesn’t see the value in it? We determine the validity of your competitive advantages and test your performance of those competitive advantages. We also determine how well your competitors are performing against your competitive advantages: if they are performing better than you at your own competitive advantages, is it a competitive advantage?

Suggestions on how to improve

In the interview we ask your client or customer how you can improve. This is an exceptionally powerful part of the interview as we identify quick and easy solutions to improve the relationship. We also focus on those areas where your score is not as high as their needs and where your competitors score is higher than yours. This way you can tailor make a solution for each client enhancing their loyalty and increasing your revenue.

Strengths and Weaknesses

We determine your strengths and weaknesses, what your clients and customer like and dislike about you. We try and get names of your employees who are doing an exceptional job as these people are the glue that keeps the relationship together and their actions must be rewarded.

Customer Relationship Auditing Outputs

There are two types of outputs we generate: an Individual Report per customer and a Summary Report at the end of the project.

• Individual Report This report is per customer and is emailed to you within 48 hours of the interview (our competitive advantage) so you can immediately react to issues surrounding that customer. The Individual Report reflects that customer’s needs, how well you are meeting them, a competitor analysis, their perceptions of your competitive advantages, your strengths and weaknesses, and what wallet share percent you have relative to your competitors.
• Summary Report This is comprised of a report and software (delivered within 10 business days of the last interview). This shows what your customers think of your departments and business processes. It also divides the results into your different market segments. The software allows you to drill down so you can see which customer said what, provides you with an a better understanding of the information so you can act on it accordingly.

The Zone of Tolerance (Parasuraman, Zeithaml, & Berry)

For every service, customers have two service outcomes: a desired service outcome, (the ultimate in service excellence) and an adequate service level (the minimum they will put up with before moving elsewhere).

Between the desired and adequate service levels, there is a “Zone of Tolerance” (Zeithaml, Parasuraman & Berry) where the customer will happily deal with you and where you have a competitive advantage. However, this Zone of Tolerance can fluctuate depending on the situation (service failure or an emergency), or the number of alternate suppliers in the market.

Above the Desired: If you are giving your customers an above the desired level of service, you will have loyal customers who will stick with you through thick and thin spreading positive word-of-mouth advertising. They are called “Evangelists”. They will be so loyal that they will actually cut out alternative suppliers. However, you must ask yourself, if you are giving your customers a service above their desired level, are you not over-servicing or under-charging them?

Below the Adequate: If you are giving your customers a below the adequate level of service, your customers resent you and will be actively looking for alternate suppliers. They are what we call “Terrorists”. Perhaps they have to buy from you because it is company policy, or there are no other suppliers out there yet. You are vulnerable to a change of company policy or a new entrant in the market.

Zone of Tolerance. From the above, the ideal is to be within the Zone of Tolerance, however the difficulty is determining what each customer’s Zone of Tolerance is. The only way to do this is to ask the customer.