Building loyal customers

I found an interesting post on the Church of the Customer Blog this morning that provides an example of how playing ‘nice’ is the best form of customer relationship management (CRM). In the post, Ben McConnell references a friend of his who received a personalized thank-you email after making a purchase at a pseudo-pizza restaurant. An ensuing positive email conversation occurred between the customer and executives at the company, thus leading us to believe that this level of personalization is warranted

When we were manufacturing our MouseDriver product, we took the same approach to CRM. Our feeling was that any positive experience that we could provide to an actual or potential customer would lead to customer evangelism, and ultimately, increased sales of our product. For the most part, our efforts paid off in droves. Customers subscribed to our Insider newsletter (you actually had to send me an email to my personal account claiming that you were ‘In’), the media started picking up on the company and ultimately our story made headlines in numerous major publications. Could we measure what our efforts actually drove? No. But we were pretty sure that the time spent personally responding to each and every customer was well worth it as our sales increased dramatically without spending a dime on marketing.

At WhitePages.com, we have roughly 40MM unique users who utilize our product and services. I don’t know the exact number, but I’m guessing we receive at least 1000 comments a week from customers addressing all sorts of things….what they don’t like about the site, what they love about our company, anecdotes on how WhitePages.com helped to find a long lost friend, comments around privacy, etc., etc. So, with that kind of volume, is it worthwhile, or even feasible, to respond to every customer personally? Is there a measurable benefit that we can track to ensure that our efforts are rewarded? My personal belief is that it’s worth it, but at what cost?

Would love to hear your thoughts.

John
VP, Marketing