We all know as customers, we have many choices to make in how we spend our money. Particularly on travel, eating out, shopping and on other leisure spending activities. Recent polls will tell us that 45% of people are opening their wallets more this summer than they did last year. That’s the good news. The bad news is that they are not necessarily spending their money on leisure and fun activities.
According to a recent Gallup survey, more money is being eaten up and spent on bills and basic things that people need to survive, such as food, electricity, and health care. Here are some interesting results from their survey.
- 59% of people reported spending more on groceries this summer than they did last year.
- 58% of people are spending more on gas
- 45% are paying more for utilities
- 42% are paying more for healthcare
How does this affect us? Customers will be spend more on things they need and will have less cash to spend on things they want. Close to 40% stated that they will be spending less on travel, cutting back on going to restaurants, buying clothes, electronics and other fun activities.
Building relationships and creating a memorable, and unique customer experience that is different than your competition is becoming more and more important to survive in business today. Businesses that have built loyal customers over time are in better position to receive and take advantage of a customer’s discretionary income. Customers will still eat out, buy clothes and travel. However if you are not their business of choice, they will probably go to your competition, use coupons or wait for special discounts. That is why everyone in your business, including all front line staff, need to do what ever they can to keep and maintain customers and build loyalty by providing memorable customer experiences.
In order to survive this summer and beyond, here are 10 questions you should be asking and discussing in your business:
- 1. What are we doing to create loyalty?
- 2. What are we doing to create word-of-mouth advertising?
- 3. What are we doing to create value in the mind of our customers?
- 4. What are we doing to create memorable moments?
- 5. What are we doing to ensure reorders?
- 6. What are we doing to earn referrals?
- 7. What are we doing to make it easy for our customers to do business with us?
- 8. What are we doing to build personal relationships with our customers?
- 9. What are we doing to ensure that everyone is friendly, happy and helpful?
- 10. What type of customer experience training or coaching are we doing to differentiate our business from our competitors?
For the past 10 years, I have asked my coaching clients and audiences in my seminars these same questions. Most have no idea or have never discussed these questions with their staff. I am always glad to help and have numerous ways and strategies to get them the results they want. I will tell you, my coaching clients aren’t worried about these types of surveys. We have partnered together to attract more customers, build loyalty and continue to increase their business, even in the most difficult economic times.
How do we do it? It is not about service. It is all about creating a customer experience and making it memorable and different than their competition. The time is now. Work on answering those 10 questions and take action today! Don’t wait. If you do your competition may be ahead of you. You want what ever money is left, after spending it on necessities, to go to into your business not your competition. Now that would be MAGICAL! Good luck and contact me if would like to have more customers visiting your business this summer.
Hope You Are Enjoying The Summer.
Always Wishing You Magical Success!