Don’t Buy Your Customers Loyalty, Earn It: How Marketing Executives Can Master Customer-Centric Loyalty

Marketing has a greater role than ever when it comes to returning companies to profitable growth—and the key will be developing a new, nimble and customer-centric approach.

To support sustainable growth, companies will need to work harder and smarter to find and capitalize on growth opportunities. Accenture believes marketing executives have a key role to play by leading the transformation of the front office. One vital aspect of this transformation is a heightened focus on building customer-centric loyalty in a rapidly changing consumer context.

It appears that in the wake of the recent recession, customer behavior has changed substantially—perhaps forever.

To gain a clearer picture of this altered customer landscape, we conducted two important pieces of research in 2010. The Accenture Marketing Executive Survey and the Accenture Global Consumer Behavior Research.

• Marketing executives believe that customers expect better product quality (72 percent); more value for money (71 percent) and better customer service (68 percent).

• Nearly eight in 10 marketing executives believe that growing profitably was their most important marketing strategy—and that to achieve this, customer retention/loyalty was the most important issue (79 percent).

• Sixty-two percent of marketers believe the marketing function will need to change fundamentally during the next five years to support growth and customer loyalty.

• Less than two-thirds of marketers believe they have advanced capabilities to help them innovate with unique value propositions.

With customers much more aware of their power and much less likely to remain loyal to brands, executives have to address new and critical questions about their brands and customer loyalty, including:

• How do we position our brands to reestablish long-lasting attachments, particularly with customers who may defect to competitors offering more attractive terms?

• How does our organization avoid a permanent reinvention of customer loyalty? Is it realistic for our brand-loyal customers to prefer offshoots of our brands?

• How can we offer a preferred experience to our customers—one that is adapted to their needs and desires—to maintain their loyalty? How do we detect the moments when lapses in this loyalty occur?

• How should our company invest in customers based on their current and future loyalty?

• Which control levers should we focus on: tangible (reducing price), emotional (rewarding best customers through non-monetary benefits) or relational (catering to specific customer interests)?

• How does our organization take advantage of new technologies, such as the ability to interact more closely and nearly continuously with customers?

Accenture believes that high performance requires becoming more agile, analytical, relevant and consistent. Our proven approach to developing and quickly implementing loyalty strategies is based on these core principles:

• Support brand fundamentals. Build customer bonds to achieve name recognition, an excellent customer experience; and an emotional attachment to the brand’s essence and heritage.

• Enable deep customer insight. Understand what matters most to customers in their purchase and repurchase decisions to help forge stronger relationships.

• Personalize customer routes. Manage channels to key performance indicators as appropriate for presale, sale, complaint handling, product assistance and customer self-service.

• Support the front-office workforce. Raise awareness of the importance of delivering satisfying experiences and motivate desired workforce behavior by establishing employee rewards.

• Pilot investments. Manage marketing and commercial investments by devising pilot programs that establish the business case for larger investments.

• Exploit new technologies. Implement technologies and mobility applications/services to make loyalty management programs more efficient and help increase the return on investment.

Accenture helps organizations use innovation to develop compelling, profitable new value propositions, design and deliver tailored customer experiences and find answers to other loyalty challenges.