Customer Loyalty

The ultimate measure of your service to customers is the loyalty that they give you with the business. That can be measured by customer retention. During the 1980’s Harvard Business School did the definitive research on this subject. That work was published in a book called the “Service profit Chain.” This is one of the foundations that is used in this class to show students the “how to” measure customer loyalty.

There is a direct correlation between employee satisfaction and loyalty and customer satisfaction and loyalty. This correlation is explored and explained in this program. Various surveys are exposed to measure employee satisfaction. This information provides recommendations for action.

The Construction Equipment Industry has conducted customer surveys every five years that asks customers about their buying habits. These surveys provided guidance to the dealers on what the percentage of defections would be in the Industry. This class provides a direct linkage that can be used on profitability related to customer retention by the parts business and the service business.

This Customer Loyalty class starts to address the retention measures to use when a customer is assigned to a specific employee. A customer assigned to a Product Support Salesmen has a retention goal, a customer loyalty goal, of 100%. The tools to perform this calculation are provided in this class.

For an audio description of this class…….

Enroll Now (English)

Enroll Now (Spanish)

TESTIMONIALS

Friday Filosophy v.01.20.2023

Friday Filosophy v.01.20.2023 offers quotes and words of wisdom from Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (25 February 1841 – 3 December 1919) was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to Watteau."

Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born in Limoges, Haute-Vienne, France, in 1841. His father, Léonard Renoir, was a tailor of modest means, so, in 1844, Renoir's family moved to Paris in search of more favorable prospects. The location of their home, in rue d’Argenteuil in central Paris, placed Renoir in proximity to the Louvre. Although the young Renoir had a natural proclivity for drawing, he exhibited a greater talent for singing. His talent was encouraged by his teacher, Charles Gounod, who was the choirmaster at the Church of St Roch at the time. However, due to the family's financial circumstances, Renoir had to discontinue his music lessons and leave school at the age of thirteen to pursue an apprenticeship at a porcelain factory.

In 1862, he began studying art under Charles Gleyre in Paris. There he met Alfred Sisley, Frédéric Bazille, and Claude Monet. At times, during the 1860s, he did not have enough money to buy paint. During the Paris Commune in 1871, while Renoir painted on the banks of the Seine River, some Communards thought he was a spy and were about to throw him into the river, when a leader of the Commune, Raoul Rigault, recognized Renoir as the man who had protected him on an earlier occasion. In 1874, a ten-year friendship with Jules Le Cœur and his family ended, and Renoir lost not only the valuable support gained by the association but also a generous welcome to stay on their property near Fontainebleau and its scenic forest. This loss of a favorite painting location resulted in a distinct change of subjects.

Hoping to secure a livelihood by attracting portrait commissions, Renoir displayed mostly portraits at the second Impressionist exhibition in 1876. He contributed a more diverse range of paintings the next year when the group presented its third exhibition; they included Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette and The Swing. Renoir did not exhibit in the fourth or fifth Impressionist exhibitions, and instead resumed submitting his works to the Salon. By the end of the 1870s, particularly after the success of his painting Mme Charpentier and her Children (1878) at the Salon of 1879, Renoir was a successful and fashionable painter.

In 1883, Renoir spent the summer in Guernsey, one of the islands in the English Channel with a varied landscape of beaches, cliffs, and bays, where he created fifteen paintings in little over a month. Most of these feature Moulin Huet, a bay in Saint Martin's, Guernsey. These paintings were the subject of a set of commemorative postage stamps issued by the Bailiwick of Guernsey in 1983.

Around 1892, Renoir developed rheumatoid arthritis. In 1907, he moved to the warmer climate of "Les Collettes", a farm at the village of Cagnes-sur-Mer, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, close to the Mediterranean coast. Renoir died at Cagnes-sur-Mer on 3 December 1919.

An artist, under pain of oblivion, must have confidence in himself, and listen only to his real master: Nature.

The pain passes, but the beauty remains.

Art is about emotion; if art needs to be explained it is no longer art.

To my mind, a picture should be something pleasant, cheerful, and pretty, yes pretty! There are too many unpleasant things in life as it is without creating still more of them.

One must from time-to-time attempt things that are beyond one's capacity.

One morning, one of us ran out of the black, it was the birth of Impressionism.

Regularity, order, desire for perfection destroy art. Irregularity is the basis of all art.

Nothing costs so little, goes so far, and accomplishes so much as a single act of merciful service.

Why shouldn’t art be pretty? There are enough unpleasant things in the world.

Work lovingly done is the secret of all order and all happiness.

I would never have taken up painting if women did not have breasts.

There are some things in painting which cannot be explained, and that something is essential.

Photography freed painting from a lot of tiresome chores, starting with family portraits.

When I've painted a woman's bottom so that I want to touch it, then [the painting] is finished.

The work of art must seize upon you, wrap you up in itself, carry you away. It is the means by which the artist conveys his passion; it is the current which he puts forth which sweeps you along in his passion.

I like a painting which makes me want to stroll in it.

There are quite enough unpleasant things in life without the need to manufacture more.

The advantage of growing old is that you become aware of your mistakes more quickly.

The Time is Now.

Did you enjoy this blog? Read more great blog posts here.

For our course lists, please click here.

January 20, 2023

Just Say Yes!

Founder and managing member Ron Slee modifies the Nike slogan in this week's blog, as he asks readers to "Just Say Yes!"

Nike started it didn’t they? Just Do It. How could you forget it as it was and continues to be everywhere? I was reminded of that yesterday during a Zoom meeting with Steve Clegg of Winsby. We were having a discussion about finance and forecasting when the discussion turned to questions that are asked of dealers. Steve opined that there are too many answers to questions that are posed by customers to dealers. Many are met with a response of another questions. Seeking more information or clarity. Steve suggested that there was a better approach to the questions that are asked of dealers. The questioner is really just asking for help. So why not respond with a simple YES. I can do that for you. I can help. I will get it for you. Take the problem the concern away from the customer.

A few weeks ago, in another discussion with another group of people, Mets Kramer and Stephanie Smith the same point came up from a different direction. When the customers come to your website what are they doing? We changed our website to ask a question on the landing page. Right in the middle of the page and it zooms towards you and away from you so you can hardly miss it. We ask “Need Help Finding Something? Click Here.” And you are taken to a series of choices available to the visitor from the website. It is making a difference for our website visitors. I had not taken into consideration that there is a such a large volume of information on our site. I know where everything is so why shouldn’t everyone else? That is what in the teaching profession we call the curse of knowledge.

Customers are looking for solutions not answer. That was my take away when Steve presented that thought to me.

Recently I wrote about us living in “The Golden Age of Information.” We can get answers to nearly anything. Just ask “Google” or “Siri” or “Alexa.” Our access to information is amazing to consider. It used to be a barrier to entry to our industry, dealers in the capital goods world, information. That is no longer true. The problem is that too many of us still are thinking that our sales force is available to give information to customers. That our sales force is a group of people that act as if they are “walking brochures.”

Our customers do their own research at their convenience and when they are ready to do something then they call us. Alex Kraft has understood this and created a wonderful tool for customers and dealers and the sales force. He has created an internet-based tool that uses text messages to announce that a customer has a need and is looking for a machine. That information is texted to the clients of his Company Heave. He has answered the question with YES. Going further he is asking the sales force who receive the texts “Do you want to help?”

Dale Hanna and Foresight Intelligence eliminate the need for questions with their SMS program which sends text messages to customers that are having work done onf their equipment. Rather than playing phone tag to find out the status of a repair between the customer and the dealer service department, which typically requires a few calls to connect, Foresight has a system that sends a text to each customer, at their choice, of any action of their machine. It could be an inspection, it could be a quotation, it could be pictures, it is rather slick, if you ask me. There is no longer the NEED, to ask the questions to get a status update. You get that update at the “speed of text.” That doesn’t eliminate the customer’s ability to talk to the dealership, it changes what the conversation is about.

Just say YES. A rather simplistic approach to an issue of concern to your customers.

Simon Sinek has become famous with his question “WHY.” This is part of one of the most viewed TED talks “Start with Why.” He poses three questions in his “Golden Circle.” What do you do” How do you do it? Why do you do it? It has become rather commonplace now for people to explore the answers to these three questions. The magic is that the WHY is not for the money. It is for some deeper meaning. It goes to the heart of who you are and what you believe. If you haven’t already watched the TED talk, I strongly urge you to take the time and do it.

That talk touches the same point as the “Just Say YES” message here. The customer is looking for help. For something. Whatever it is just say YES. I used to respond to customers when they called me and said they had a problem “No Sir, you don’t have a problem, I do.” It caused a few pauses I know but the customer “Got It” I was taking on their problem I was going to find an answer. I was going to solve it for them. I say YES. What do you do?

The Time is Now.

Did you enjoy this blog? Read more great blog posts here.

For our course lists, please click here.

July 6, 2022