Service where it matters

Businesses rely on ensuring that their customers and clients keep coming back. As a mystery shopping company, our entire business is set up around this fact. We keep our clients coming back by helping them keep their customers. Because we spend a lot of time thinking about this, we can sometimes be quite startled when others don’t appear to agree. A recent experience particularly got us thinking about how a business gets (and keeps) new customers. There are a myriad of techniques employed to get new customers into your business, but once there, they’ll only stay if you provide a service that is good enough.

Our experience went like this: we decided to get pizza.  Because one member of the group did not want to get pizza from the usual company, we tried a different pizza company. A simple quirk of fate has got us through their door, a good opportunity for them to win some new repeat customers (or not). When we arrive to collect our pizza, our name was already listed as being ready, which pleased us.  Unfortunately, we then experienced a series of customer service 'do-nots' that had us wondering whether they had any customer service training at all. The short list being:

• They did not acknowledge us. This may not appear to be much of an issue, but certainly exacerbated the problems which were to follow.
• They left us waiting for 10 minutes while they took phone orders.  This, again, wouldn’t matter so much if we had received the acknowledgement, but instead just made what was to follow worse.
• They did not have the pizzas ready.  This was pretty bad, but mistakes like this happen and how you handle them can occasionally win you life-long customers.  This did not happen though.
• They misled us.  Two of our pizzas were ready, while one had either been forgotten or accidentally given to another customer.  Instead we were told that it was “nearly ready”, whilst we watched the preparation from start to finish.
• They did not acknowledge or apologise for our extended wait.

As might be assumed, we decided to never again venture from our usual pizza place. However, this had very little to do with the initial mistake, we’ve waited for pizza before and were hardly in a rush.  Instead, it was to do with the apparent attitude of the staff towards us.  The feelings a customer has towards a company define whether they will return.  If a customer feels undervalued or unwanted, then they are very unlikely to come back.  Of course discovering how your business makes your customers feel can be very tricky, but then this is where selected mystery shoppers can make a world of difference. So, when in doubt, call the experts at Retail Active Mystery Shopping.

Increasing Customer Loyalty: A Case Study

California-based pizza maker zpizza understands the importance of repeat custom to its business, having recently run an integrated direct marketing campaign combining mail, e-mail and mobile to entice consumers to join its ‘ztribe’ loyalty club. The chain - which is known for making gourmet pizza with unique toppings – is hoping to build the club with the long-term goal of doing more business with its members in the future.

Zpizza particularly wanted to increase the number of ‘heavy users’ – customers who spend over $50 a month and order at least twice - at each of their stores across the US. The aim of the campaign was to identify local people and entice them to join the loyalty scheme.

The zpizza campaign consisted of pizza themed scratch cards that were mailed to up to 3,000 people in the local area surrounding each store. Recipients could then text in their winning code revealed on the scratch card along with their email address to claim whichever prize they had won. There was an assortment of prizes, of which the majority were free coupons; however prizes up to $5000 were possible.

The result of the campaign was a resounding success. Zpizza not only spurred existing customers into action, but also reached potential new customers; receiving nearly 2000 entries from their scratch card campaign. Registrations to ztribe were up nearly 20% compared to the regular sign-up rate. Zpizza hopes to run another loyalty promotion in the near future.

The majority of businesses, including zpizza, understand that encouraging repeat business can have a huge positive impact on their bottom line. Most recently, a study from business intelligence consultant Retail Active found that it can cost as much to gain one new customer as it does to keep five existing ones, and that repeat customers typically spend about one-third more than new ones.

Vigorously pursuing repeat business can have many positive effects, including increased sales, reduced costs and higher customer satisfaction rates. Better relationships with customer’s increases brand loyalty making it less likely for them to defect to a competitor.

Zpizza’s case study above highlights the importance of reaching out to your existing customers. As a mystery shopping and business intelligence company, Retail Active knows the power of giving existing customers the best experience possible by leveraging ‘service excellence’ to keep your customers coming back to you time after time.