Bruce Temkin, of the Temkin Group, just released his 2011 report on customer loyalty. Of the 143 companies surveyed, only 24 or 17% received a strong or very strong loyalty rating. The rest were average or below average. Among the top performers were retailers; the lowest performers included health plans, banks, cable and internet providers.
This report shows very little progress in improving loyalty from last year. The worst companies in terms of customer loyalty were in industries that "lock in" their customers for a period of time.
The lack of progress in increasing customer loyalty suggests the difficulty in creating a customer-centric company with empowerment of line employees to improve customers' experiences. The economics are clear; I would hope that every executive in America knows that loyal customers are worth much more than newly acquired ones, on average. What seems to waylay the effort to improve customer experience, particularly for Best Customers, are turf issues, compensation and performance metrics and lack of focus when times get tough.
Does your company consistently focus on improving and measuring customer experience? What are the barriers you have seen?
The Companies with the Best and Worst Consumer Loyalty
Bruce Temkin, managing partner of Temkin Group, says, "The overall story was not very good. Nearly half of the companies received 'poor' or 'very poor' ratings. The bottom of the list was dominated by health plans, TV service providers and Internet service providers. In these industries, it appears as if bad customer experience is contagious. And, worse yet, no one seems to recognize that they are infected."
There TV and Internet service providers look especially bad. They and the banks and the insurers on the list lock in their customers to varying degrees, so arguably they can get away with pleasing them less.
