Today's marketers seem to be obsessed with one KPI in particular… This famous ROI or return on investment. Why is it so important? Simply because it allows you to evaluate your performance, your success and above all to understand to what extent your actions have been profitable.
There is, however, another type of KPI that can be just as important to the future financial health of a brand or business: ROR or Return On Relationship. The reason why ROR is so important is that consumers are increasingly suspicious of brands and thus rely on the reviews of their peers. These opinions and feedback can come from anywhere, but what's important for brands is that when consumers talk about them, they talk about them positively. Thus, they must develop good relationships with their customers and trust them to send the right message. But how do you get a better MMR? How can businesses get customers to talk more positively about them?
1) Embrace a customer-centric culture
To begin with, companies must take the idea of focusing their efforts on the customer (customer centric) seriously. This means that all team members must complete customer experience training. The whole company must focus on the satisfaction of the community of customers, which must be the absolute priority! In this sense, the key performance indicators (KPIs) must therefore be adapted accordingly.
All team members must be on the “same wavelength”. The common goal to keep in mind is to improve customer satisfaction and build lasting relationships with existing consumers to generate high customer lifetime value.
2) Spend more on customer service
Investments in marketing are getting bigger every year. Advertising takes up a large share of marketers' spending. Customer service does not seem to be the priority in companies. Yet consumers still say they would pay more for better service. What if you were currently missing out on opportunities? Investing in optimizing your customer service will definitely earn you revenue and keep you ahead of the competition.
3) Invest in CX
Improving CX (or user experience) is a task that requires everyone in the organization to work together. For everyone to collaborate effectively, companies need to invest in certain systems. For example, this may include software for calculating satisfaction scores, consumer survey services, customer portfolio management systems and segments of your audience, tools for targeting and delivering certain personalized messages to your community, etc.
4) Redefining touchpoints
Another way for brands to improve their ROR is to think about each touchpoint from the customer's perspective.
- What is the question that the customer asks himself at this stage, when he is faced with such and such a point of contact?
- What problem are consumers looking to solve?
- How can we help them using this touchpoint?
- How can this experience be improved using the different touchpoints?
Each of the points of contact that exist with your community must be optimized, reflected and thought out without leaving any detail to chance. The objective remains to always offer consumers the response they expect and a shopping experience with which they will be particularly satisfied. In this, determine what are the advantages and benefits that each of your points of contact can bring to Internet users and value them in your communication strategy.
5) Help the community on social media
Businesses need to realize that they don't have complete control over customer touchpoints. In this sense, it seems essential for brands to spend time on review sites or on social networks to ensure that dissatisfied customers find an answer to their problem.
It's up to you to use all possible web tools to listen to your community and respond very responsively to their questions, misunderstandings, etc.
6) Create loyal brand ambassadors
By putting in more effort and investing in social media and customer service, for example, you'll create loyal brand ambassadors who will spread your marketing messages and stand up for you when issues arise.
In order to improve your ROR even more, consider going even further in your strategy by creating moments of surprise and pleasure that exceed customer expectations. By doing this, your customers will no longer represent only people who buy your products or services. They will indeed be an integral part of your marketing team!
