Listen to the MP3 or read the summary. Today more than ever boatyards, marinas, marine manufacturers, and service businesses need to stay connected with their customers. Leveraging today’s technology and setting up a continuous process makes it easy and inexpensive to do. Mike Casey shares best practice techniques with the boating community during this recorded 30 minute interview on ProBoat Radio host B.J. Walsh. To read the summary and key points click here

To listen to the recorded conversation or download the .mp3 file click here

Do you know how loyal each customer is? Do you have an early warning system to know when a boating customer is looking for a new marina or service provider? Do you just have a gut feel that you are doing great? This is a dangerous assumption. Things change fast and don’t wake up and find you lost a customer.

Five things you may want to consider when setting up an effective boater feedback process:

1) Make it painless for both you and the customer. Short, timely, to the point, easy to take surveys. Boaters want five or six questions. No more. Nowadays people want convenience. Online surveys take 30 seconds if designed right. Go online.

2) Leverage your reservation or service management software. Contact and invoice information is all there. Use it for timely feedback real time. It should take less than a minute to get the boater’s emails.

3) Make it a process, not an event. Survey close to when boatyard service is complete or the transient stay, but don’t over survey. New and sporadic buying customers within 30 days of order, repeat customers no more than every 90 days. Too much of a good thing kills response rates and relationships. You can ask one marketing question, but no more. Ask what they buy elsewhere. They will tell you and then you can expand client share.

4) Shoot for a 25 to 30% response rate. If done right you will hit that. Monitor response rates, product and service quality, and loyalty. Review the info in team meetings.

5) Do something with the data. The boater gave you a gift by sharing. Cherish it and thank them by following up on leads and correcting problems. The best run marine service providers have a process for this.

Good luck in retaining customers by trolling for continuous feedback, staying paranoid, and doing something with the information gathered.

Yesterday I was speaking with the director of a state marine industry association who said something very profound.  He said that many have the wrong thought process because they are alarmed dealers are hurting and going out of business.  If they go out of business, they wrongly believe there will be less boaters. 

He went on to say that service is what keeps people in boating, not having access to buying boats.  Most boats are used anyway and what makes people leave boating is waiting too long for the boatyard to fix the boat or not knowing what is going on with their boat.  He went on to say that many boatyards don’t comprehend they are in the service business and need to keep customers in the loop when jobs are underway and they need to hit deadlines.  In the northern regions if it takes two weeks to get a boat fixed, that is 2 or 3 weekends out of 16 that they have to use the boat.  On average, a 40 foot boat costs about $5,000 to $10,000 a year just to maintain, get dockage, winterize, launch, insurance, etc.   Losing two weeks can be a reason to just get out of boating and start camping, golfing, or get into some other past time or hobby. 

So a lot rests on the boatyard’s ability to turn jobs quickly and effectively or the boating industry will suffer from people getting out of boating.  That is the real issue, not selling more new boats.

To learn about and obtain copies of the AMI Boater Satisfaction Benchmark report you may visit https://www.marinaassociation.org/ami-publications.php. The study benchmarks facility satisfaction, customer service satisfaction, customer loyalty, and marina services quality.

Today ABBRA posted how to obtain copies of the ABBRA Boatyard Customer Satisfaction Benchmark report.  This report was created by Survey Advantage in cooperation with ABBRA.  Customer Satisfaction for facility quality, boatyard service and customer service were benchmarked from boater survey results collected in cooperation with ABBRA members using ABBRA CustomerPulse(TM) and ABBRA HealthCheck(TM), two programs managed by Survey Advantage to help boatyards stay connected with customers.   To read the general summary and learn how to obtain your own copy of the benchmark report please visit   http://www.abbra.org/customer-service-index.

This weekend a colleague asked a myself and a few fellow business owners if our customers were asking for discounts after work was complete. His customers were telling him they could pay him immediately if he took another 20% off the bill or he would need to wait for payment. This is for work he already had done!! With the recession he added that his closure rates on bids went from 50% to under 10% and he was desperate. He is in a competitive, commodity market, but something isn’t right here. He is taking the 20% off the bills and discounting, but his business is not doing well. You could see the worry on his face and I am sure the customers are as well.

I suggest if customers are asking for discounts that you change the scope and give options. Give three different scopes of work with three different price points, but then hold firm on the work being done. You must do this to stay healthy and your customers should respect this. People love options and the customer will understand that with options there are varying levels of product.

There are typically three things to look at with any project scope; price, timeframe, and quality. Keep to these three sides of the triangle when bidding and discussing jobs with customers.

Before finding yourself in an unprofitable situation, the best businesses find ways to differentiate themselves and offer unique and special services and products. Customers will be happy and your business will remain healthy.

Yesterday I was speaking with a good friend who was heading home for an appointment with his oil burner maintenance company.    Since I needed some maintenance I asked how he liked the business.  He said he “HAD” to use them because the business was a client.  He continued saying that he just wished he could go elsewhere and  explained all the problems he had over the years.  He felt hostage.  I call  this “Fake Loyalty”.  It is too bad this oil burner company doesn’t get it right and give this customer a reason to refer them.  I am just glad this guy told me to stay away.  Does anyone know a good oil burner guy?

Ask your customers the question “How likely are you to recommend us to family and friends?” Some of your customers may feel like hostages for now.  Why not make it right.

Marine service providers are encouraged to compare how they are meeting the needs of boaters with others in the industry.

Jamestown, RI, March 6, 2009 – As part of its commitment to help marine service providers develop profitable, highly responsive, customer-focused organizations, Survey Advantage (www.surveyadvantage.com), a customer research and loyalty firm, has released their 2008 benchmarks for marinas and boatyards. This benchmark report was designed in cooperation with AMI and ABBRA, the two major associations serving the marine services industry. The report tracks four key areas: facility quality, marine service quality, customer service, and boater loyalty.

“We hope this benchmark will help marine service providers understand their competitive position in the market and set goals for expansion and improvement. Marine service providers now have the same customer intelligence the hospitality industry has been collecting for years. Any size operation can obtain feedback after jobs, transient stays, or from seasonal and annual customers to drive improvements and referrals.” said Michael Casey, president of Survey Advantage.

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The little things tick people off at marinas; cold showers, no toilet paper in bathrooms, not enough launches on race night, puddles near the electrical connections.   When it comes to boatyard service the frustrations include dirty boots climbing deck during commissioning, greasy hands on masts, rude ill trained seasonal help. 

The surest way to keep customers is to keep the pulse of your operation and react quickly.  Understand how you are performing on a regular basis.  Don’t wait to find out the showers were cold a week after the heater went on the blink.  Yes, you would think a customer would walk in and tell you, but don’t assume.  Make it easy for customers to give you feedback.  Feedback cards and boxes in convenient places, online surveys on kiosks or emailed to customers after a stay or boatyard service, phone survey followup for larger jobs or high end operations. 

The best way to keep your operation profitable is through referrals.  By building an army of those “Very Likely” to recommend you, there is no reason to have a huge marketing budget, put big advertisements in cruising guides, or buy google ad words.  People in boating love to talk about experiences.  Their boating or yacht club gathers are your greatest marketing opportunities and it’s free!  You much rather have the member bragging about their recent decision by saying,  ”Boy, marina xyz was the best I have been to.    A true 5 star. Thier customer service was unbelievable and they …..  The facilities were incredible and they had……..  The most outstanding thing was……

The flip side could be “Never go to XYZ marina.  The bathrooms were always out of toilet paper, I had to …  The showers were cold at 6AM causing me to …..  I had to wait 20 minutes for the obnoxious kid on the gas dock to……

Remember, your best source of referrals and repeat business is to make experiences memorable in a good way.  Give them a reason to brag about their great choice when sipping wine with their boating friends.  The only way to make this happen is to keep the pulse of your operation through the eyes of your boating customers.

Ever work with a supplier, business partner, or vendor when your relationship was virtually dead and you were actively searching for someone else to supply that service or product to you?  You were walking or still buying from them, but trying like mad to get out from under them.  They made life so miserable for you, were very difficult to do business with, were rigid in their policies, did not come through for you when you needed them.   You felt liberated when you could finally tell them to go pound sand.   You then went on to tell everyone you could how aweful it was and now how good it was. 

Now as a business owner or manager, we all need to look in the mirror.  I will be the first to confess that I have at times made life miserable for customers, but not on purpose.  Maybe you are now saying “Boy, that business is messed up”.  Well, if you have been in business more than 20 years and haven’t had a dissatisfied customer I want to hang out with you.  Things happen, but we need to own up to it, fix the issue quickly and stay on top of it.  Process breakdowns, lack of proper resources, miscommunications can cause train wrecks, but typically the problems start small and if left uncorrected come to a head.  When we hear of these problems we apologize and can’t believe it happened.

Does your business know when customers are so frustrated with you that they are trying to leave?   The larger the enterprise, the trickier it is to know.  The smaller the enterprise, the easier for the customer to gently walk away without telling the truth to your face.  Here are a true story from a recent survey we conducted.  A printer recieved a loyalty rating, those who say they would recommend you to others, of 53%.  Average printers run in the 92% range here.  Nearly 100 years ago they carved out their niche and owned the market by locking out competition, but now things changed and their ex-customers were telling them why they left and really gave it to them.   The “Walking Dead” or those still buying, but feeling hostage explained their efforts to find someone else.  I felt aweful for the business because it was slowing dying and management continued to blame the economy and the shift to the internet as the reason.  There is some truth in that, but customers were also walking to other printers.  It was not the quality of the product as much as the level of service that caused the walking dead.

Lesson learned:  keep the pulse of your customers over time, react quickly, and don’t become complacent.     

Here are a few things to consider when you look at customer loyalty and keeping the pulse.  Think of the critical satisfiers for your customer base.  Assuming your product is solid, think of the things such as responsiveness to e-mail and voicemails,  shipping product on time, having clear invoices, estimating properly, estimating timely, communicating project status on a continuous basis, issuing credits timely, shipping the right products,  having product in stock for quick delivery.  Pick the top 4 or 5 things that if done well will put you in the best position.  But, don’t neglect the little things that can drive people crazy.   

Great Customer Loyalty is driven by treating each customer in a unique and special way while doing the basics well.