Shift the Focus of Customer Relationships
John Todor, Author of Addicted Customers: How to Get Them Hooked on Your Company
How do you get customers to scrimp elsewhere so they can splurge on your offering? Offer a relationship that gives them a better experience, reduces stress, and increases the value they get.
This type of relationship leads to customer equity. Customer equity leads to higher profits, greater lifetime value, and the power of word-of-mouth. Yet, most businesses are compelled to compete on price and convenience. Why? They have no systematic process for building customer equity.
The basis of these relationships is trust.
However, according to the 2006 Edelman Trust Barometer, customers rank most companies, executives, products, and marketing in the bottom one third of the trust scale. Many business people feel they stand behind their products and therefore are trustworthy. Guess what? Customers expect quality products and services. This only leads to trust in the product, it does not add trust or value to the relationship.
