According to new studies, customer satisfaction is longer enough. Customers these days want to be delighted and appreciated for their efforts of buying your goods or services.

 

For most businesses, delivering standard customer satisfaction is the way to maintain loyalty. However, the market has changed, and a new measurement of customer is emerging.

 

Satisfaction as a measurement is assessing the ability to deliver what customers are paying for and what they expect. Satisfaction is just the starting line in the race of customer loyalty and retention.

 

Satisfaction is measured by product or service quality, speed of delivery, price, convenience and the ease of doing business with you etc.

 

However, the more you can delight your customer, that is make them feel valued and wanted the more likely they are to shop with you time and time again. This is where the concept of ‘appreciation’ comes in.

Look up the word in the dictionary and you find it means ‘recognition and enjoyment of the good qualities of someone or something.’ The crucial words here being recognition and enjoyment.

 

Appreciation is measured by friendliness, helpfulness, understanding needs, trust and communication and the general sense that the customer enjoys doing business with you.

 

It’s easy for a competitor to match you point for point on customer service, but appreciation is a much more difficult for two businesses to equally duplicate.

 

The reason is that satisfaction is often a mechanical, action driven process, appreciation on the other hand is a more aesthetic driven process often weaved into the fabric, ethos and culture of the business.

 

Focusing on customer appreciation as well as satisfaction is what will give your business that competitive edge. Research by Net Promoter Score, a tool used to gauge customer loyalty, showed that appreciation offers a 91% assurance on repeat business whereas satisfaction offered only 48%.

 

So how do you measure ‘appreciation within your organisation? It will vary for business to business but will generally include repeat business, word of mouth referrals, increased sales, 5-star reviews, better customer retention, better attitude towards your staff, higher repeat purchases and more.

 

Focusing on customer appreciation can also have a massive effect on team morale and how your business is perceived by the customer, as they’re more likely to respect your staff and treat your business like a valued friend.
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They are also more likely to become willing ambassadors for your brand, urging on your success and can even overlook the occasional customer service oversight.

 

However the most important aspect of focusing on appreciation is that it makes your business distinct and unique. This is something that your competitors will never be able to match, no matter how shiny and new their products and offerings may be.

 

Leading brands like Apple, Amazon, Nissan, Levis who focus on customer appreciation can’t be wrong. So what are you doing to show your clients and customers that they are truly more than sales profits? How are you delighting them and showing them they’re fully appreciated?

ELC Associates is leading BME led public relation, marketing communications and print helps charities and SMEs ‘create their vision’ so that they become successful and growing organisations. If you want to know how we can help your organisation create print or marketing communications that ‘delights’ then call us on 0794 9529 231/0208 090 2233 or enquire online. See some of our clients work at https://www.elcassociates.co.uk/portfolio