Building loyalty goes beyond good customer satisfaction scores.

• Author: Clapp, Bruce
• Position: Customer Retention

Many of us have implemented an on-boarding program to address the immediate risk of attrition and to positively impact the strength of our initial customer relationships. Great news. But this is only a start toward building the relationship we need to attract, maintain and grow successful loyal households. Below are four lessons about deepening the customer relationship.

Lesson No. 1: Realize that on-boarding is just the beginning of a more comprehensive process of building loyalty. In a recent US Today article, Wells Fargo & Co. was profiled for its ability to sell an average of 5.2 products per household, with over 20 percent having eight or more products per household. The secret? Hard work, focused training and a CEO that drives the process and inspects every day the positive progress toward the goal. The organization focused less on product delivery and silos of business units and more on what the individual customer needed. Results reporting were changed, incentive programs revamped, employee reviews were changed. Simple, but very complex.

Lesson No. 2: Building loyalty is an organizational effort across all customer contact points and business units.

Carlson Marketing Group recently released a white paper on "The Untapped Opportunity in Financial Services." The report focused on a measurement that defines the "strength of relationship" and its impact on referrals, willingness to buy, and overall loyalty (as defined by maintaining and growing their relationship). They report four key behavioral characteristics related to creating and refining relationship strength: (1) Switching costs. (2) Service experience. (3) Free benefits. (4) Physical convenience.

These four areas impact the ability to retain a customer and, more importantly, successfully grow and expand the relationship. According to Carlson, having a high level of relationship strength increases the likelihood of a customer remaining a customer one year from now by 42 percent and produced a 57 percent lift...