#beinglocal

In an age where we bemoan the fact that everything and everyone is going online to do their shopping, it’s scary how we’re falling victims to this in our own stores.

One of the big advantages that we have as neighborhood businesses over the faceless online competition is the fact that we can provide a quality of personal customer service that is not available elsewhere.

By doing so, we can charm customers with a unique personal experience that will keep them coming back. It’s no coincidence that Apple and now Amazon invest so much on a physical bricks and mortar presence!

So - small business owner beware. Don’t over digitalize your businesses for the sake of efficiency and lose a key asset in your arsenal.

Here are just a few examples of where this can happen:

POS systems: There’s nothing wrong with a POS system per se (it’s great for inventory, efficiency, accuracy etc..), but it can also lead to laziness.  When a cashier is bent over scanning bar codes and all you hear is:

“Next!/Swipe your card/Sign/Next!”

Then you know you are missing out on a golden opportunity to promote your business and build relationships.

Loyalty Programs: most loyalty programs are run through a POS system, making them seamless. But in this case seamless can be an opportunity missed - far better to implement a loyalty program that encourages positive communication and interaction between the customer and the business even if it does take a few more seconds of your time.

Smartphones/Tablets: We’ve all become victims of the smartphone but customers are not impressed if your team needs google every time there’s a question about a product. They’d also rather you were “liking” them as opposed to being glued to Instagram, texting friends or checking email.  

Get personal - find ways to encourage your team to engage with customers.

You can do this through training, establishing behaviors and attitudes and by providing your team with tools that force positive communication and interaction with customers.

Our WeLocals® loyalty program is one such tool, designed it in such a way that it requires a social interaction every time it is used.

When I talk to business owners about loyalty or incentive programs, the conversation often comes around to customer service.

Why?  Because any loyalty or incentive program is really an extension of customer service.

Incentive Programs, aimed at new customers, identify your voice and set expectations for your target potential customers, setting the tone for when they actually come to your store.  

Loyalty programs allow you to make customers feel special by bringing them in to your “club”, carry on the conversation with them once they’ve left your store, encourage them to recommend you to friends and attract them back and reward them for staying loyal to you.

So, if the basic attitude to customers in your business, your “customer service” is luke warm/casual and the customer is seen as a given rather than an opportunity, it stands to reason that your loyalty or incentive program will not succeed the way it should.  

At best, it will be embraced half-heartedly, at worst it will be misunderstood and seen by your team as a waste of time and (possibly) money and retired to some back shelf somewhere!

And why does it matter?  

Because, for small businesses especially, customer service is a cheap tool that can make you or break you. Done well it differentiates you from the competition promotes your business and brings customers back, done badly, or not at all, it will scare away customers and ruin your reputation fast.

Here are a few statistics to chew on:

Frank Flavell (C.E.O. of Alabaster & Fern) and I developed a whole workshop around the topic of customer service and how to improve it, which we presented at a Townsquared sponsored event the other day.

You can get a copy of our presentation “CPR – how to breathe new life in to Customer Service” here.  

You might also be interested in reading about a few ideas on how to find out How good your customer service really is!

Last month, we looked at how loyalty programs can fail to produce the results we’re looking for.  

At the same time we established the 3 basic elements that make any initiative really work:

So here goes:

CHOOSE CAREFULLY

Choose a loyalty program that will work for you and your goals, makes sense to your business model, compliments your customer service program and doesn’t involve a whole ton of extra work, equipment & training.

Remember, it’s not just the reward that matters, but also the personal relationship that gets built up and the word of mouth that gets generated which then encourages new customers to visit you. (see 7 steps to customer engagement)

TRAIN

Once you’ve decided you want to run a loyalty program, make sure you make it part of your business process and customer service program.  Train your team to encourage all your customers to become part of it.  

EMBRACE

Part of the training includes making your team realize that this is something that is important to the business, effects the bottom line and is not an optional passing fad that can be allowed to gather dust.

SHOW THE LOVE

Customers need to feel that you genuinely appreciate their loyalty and that this program is a way to recognize them as most special and reward them.  Make them feel that they are doing you a favor by being part of it.

PROMOTE

Once your team is psyched and sees the benefits of the program they will then be able to promote it continuously and effectively.

Encourage customers to also inquire about the program by promoting it with a tasteful flyer/poster/decal and put it on your website.

Promote in-store with unique deals just for members of your loyalty club.

RE-ENFORCE

Introduce simple systems that continually remind members of the team to push the program:

At WeLocals, we’re just introducing a little pop up or sticker to go on the register:

“Are you part of our loyalty program?  We’d love to have you join, so we can thank and reward you for being a great customer”

Ever had that frustrating moment where you’ve spent days or weeks setting up a Loyalty program – and then it doesn’t really work?

It may be that you’ve chosen the wrong kind of program for your store – we’ll be looking at that in a different blog.

Or it could be that you’ve fallen in to the trap of thinking that, once a program is set up, it’ll simply run itself – It won’t – it needs to be actively promoted and universally embraced.

Implementing a loyalty program is like introducing any new ‘system’ to your work environment and employees – it needs to be very clear that this impacts the overall success of the business. If your team don’t think it’s important and you don’t seem to care that much either, it won’t work.

Here are some of the attitudes that need to be avoided right from the start if you want your initiative to succeed:

1)   UNNECESSARY: misunderstood by employees

As we know 80% of our business comes from 20% of our customers yet giving rewards to existing customers can often seem counter intuitive.  Often, there’s a feeling of “why should I give something away to someone who is already coming to my store”.  Instead the attitude should be “let me show my appreciation to someone who visits regularly and give them another reason to come back again”

2)   UNIMPORTANT: Treated as optional

For busy small business owners, this is an easy trap to fall in to even if we do have the best of intentions. It’s easy to set something up and then walk away thinking that it will run itself – without constant promotion and monitoring though, the danger is that it loses importance, becomes seen as optional and starts to gather dust.

3)   EMBARASSING: Presented apologetically

A consequence of this is that it appears to employees that the store doesn’t really believe in its own program.  This then passes on to the customer who are either never made aware of the fact that the business wants to reward them for their loyalty or, if they are, that it is not heartfelt and offered begrudgingly -  “we have a rewards program but you’re probably not interested”

4)   TOO MUCH WORK: Too cumbersome

Sometimes we or our employees feel they’re just too busy to go through the whole process of registering points, punching cards  etc.. This may be a sign that the program is too complicated or involves too much extra work on the business’ behalf.

With careful planning, Loyalty programs can be a great tool but they do need thoughtful setting up. 

In our next blog we’ll explore the tips on how to make loyalty programs work better. We learned most of this while working with our partner stores on the  WeLocals initiative.

WE’VE ALL TRIED IT:

We’ve all run a loyalty program of some sort at some time:

Return discount voucher

Email offer giving past customers a great deal

Buy 9 get one free punch card

Outside rewards program or POS based one

BECAUSE WE KNOW IT’S IMPORTANT:

We do this, because we know deep down that loyalty is important and it’s good to encourage customers to come back.  After all

 BUT WHY DOESN’T IT ALWAYS WORK?

 …. but then our program starts to gather dust and we wonder why it’s not really working as well as we’d hoped!

SOUND FAMILIAR?  

We were mulling this one over the other day as we worked with our partner businesses on making the WeLocals program more effective.

We came up with a few reasons why loyalty programs don’t always work so well and a few suggestions on how to make loyalty programs work better which we’ll share with you over the coming weeks.