The difference between customers “Likely” to recommend and those “Very Likely” to recommend is much wider than you think. Let’s look at how a conversation could go between a prospective print buyer who is asking one of your customers for help choosing a printer.

As an owner and sales person I would feel just great with my customer’s performance! That performance is a direct result of your performance. The quality work and service you provide makes it easy for them to feel confident in you helping their friend.

As an owner or someone is sales I wouldn’t be too thrilled with my customer’s enthusiasm here. The prospect is probably thinking he may consider ABC Printer, but it definitely isn’t a homerun and he probably should just keep asking other friends.

ABC Printers is not flattered to say the least! Now it can get really ugly from here. No one has customers feeling the way this next person feels. Only kidding, we all make mistakes.

Ugh! This is what brings a business to the brink. We don’t need to many of these characters running around spreading doom and gloom. What was that commercial “Don’t let this happen to you.”

Now let’s get back on the bright side of life.

Keep your employees focused on “WOWing” customers and keep all employees accountable for driving the customers to jump on the chance to refer you. Give them the opportunity to brag about their great decision to work with you. If someone is “Likely” to recommend you, find out what it will take to get to “Very Likely”.

It is amazing how many customers will give you a false sense of security by saying “Likely”. Some customers will say “I never give anyone the best ratings.” I totally disagree with this and any time you probe and dig deeper you will find that they do recommend other suppliers who are “WOWing” them.

Your “Very Likely” customers are most likely to take full advantage of a referral program, drive prospects through your doors so you don’t need to spend big advertising and marketing dollars, and they will help you stay profitable. Creating more “Very Likely” customers will maintain that stability in your business. Rally and promote to your team to focus on the customer no matter where they are in the organization. Everyone is in customer service and their goal should be to delight customers.

Focus on keeping a high percentage of your customers in the “Very Likely” to recommend bucket.

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A few years back a great book was published, The Ultimate Question by Fred Reichheld. He explains how several well known leaders in their industries leverage customer loyalty to drive profitability. It makes so much sense. If customers love your product and feel unique and special, they will recommend you.

Think about your marketing budget. What if you could get rid of the budget because prospects keep knocking on your doors? Enterprise Rent-a-car™ is praised in their industry for profitability and embracing the concept of customer loyalty. It is no surprise they have become the #1 rental business in the world.  Their advertising budget is a fraction of their competitors’.

What does this have to do with the printing industry? The best run printers have lower marketing budgets and leverage referral programs to keep customer’s promoting. This doesn’t happen overnight, but is part of their long term strategy.   ABC Printers tracks performance, reads customer comments daily, sets up teams to correct problems, engages the customer with this first hand feedback, sets up referral programs, and promotes customer loyalty.   They know when loyalty is dropping, and more importantly they address the issues immediately.  The operation remains customer focused and it pays off.  

We changed the name of the real printer to ABC Printers to protect identify.

How do you know if your customers are promoting you? The best way is measuring sources of incoming business. Recently one printer measured that 17% of their customers came from referrals while another was over 40%. What a difference. What a great way to save marketing dollars by having prospects knocking on your door. It is not surprising that the printer with 40% is growing during the recession while the 17% printer is hanging on.

How do you measure the customer referral factor in your business? There are two ways. First, any good CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system has fields to flag the source of new customers. Measure both internal referrals within your larger shared accounts and external referrals or new business relationships. Second, printers should ask after orders are delivered if the customer will recommend you to colleagues and friends. Do this on a continual basis, but respect your high volume customers. Surveying once a month is acceptable if the survey is short and done professionally. Only the highest ratings should be considered promoters of your business. Based on our print buyer surveying the average printer receives an 82%. This means that 82% of their customers are very likely to recommend. The best printers are above 90% and the lower tier is just north of 70%. The fascinating thing about the concept of creating raving fans or delighted customers is that major corporations such as Enterprise Rent-a-car, Southwest Airlines, and Intuit continue to grow profitably by viewing the long term value of a customer and measuring their referral scores.

In the printing industry we offer printers a program, CustomerPulse, which calculates the industry referral index on a monthly basis.  Frankly the bar is higher for the printing industry than just about any industry out there.  The ability to move to another printer is easy in many instances and most print buyers already buy from multiple printers.  Also, the Business to Business dynamic needs to be taken into account.

Be truthful with yourself when measuring customer loyalty or tendency for customers to refer you.  One printer shared that their score was over 90%, but it was based on 50 surveys a month out of the 4,000 individual businesses buying from them monthly.

Start measuring referral sources and measure your customer loyalty and referral index on a continual basis.  It will help your long term profitability.

Think of your best suppliers, vendors, partnerships. These are busineses that make you feel special and unique. They do the little things that don’t cost a lot of money, but show flexibilty, responsiveness and you connect with them. For printers this means asking your customers what you can do to make life easier and then delivering on that. If they want proofs picked up, then you pick them up. If they want a call when you drop the mailer, then you personally call their cell phone to let them know. Here are a few easy things to do to make the customer feel special.

1) Give your best customers your cell phone and maybe even your home phone. They won’t call unless it is an emergency, but it shows you care.
2) Invest in a robust CRM system. Be able to track key dates, events, personal information, notes from past meetings. Takethe time to review this before your visits or phone calls.
3)Communicate the way the customer wants. Some love e-mail and others hate it. Ask customers and use the appropriate methods. Respect “Opt Outs” from your communications, but be careful managing this. Most customers don’t want to be “Opted out” of everything, but maybe just one e-communication piece. Manage this to keep communications open.
4)Don’t assume they are doing well. Ask them face to face, survey them once a year, do a short simple survey once a month. Keep those lines open. Some customers will tell you face to face if something is up, but some rather think and type up their thoughts in a comments box of a survey. One size doesn’t fit all.
5) Think of chemistry and don’t be afraid to move or assign CSRs and sales people who match the chemistry of the customer. Many people will buy based on rapport as well as how well you do.
6) Always tell the truth. I know this sounds obvious, but customers respect if you tell them if you made a mistake. Of course you can’t have too many of those, but owning up to it is respected and honorable.