The fact that attracting a new customer costs more expensive than keeping the established customer — is known widely.

But you should know replies on the following questions for the effective keeping of the customer:

• Does anything Company suggests correspond to customers expectations?
• To what extent does the level of customers servicing correspond to marketing standards?
• What customers do think about servicing?

These questions arise more frequently when:

• A Company begins to lose customers under some occasions;
• There is constant tension and mutual discontent in relations with customers;
• There is necessity of attestation under ISO standard (standard of quality management system);
• Company implement balanced scorecard;
• There is necessity of carrying out benchmarking;
• Company searches possibility to sell to Customer more and longer (that is Company desires to make its customer to be loyal and keep him).

Realizing true needs and expectations of the customer helps to solve of these problems and assigned tasks.

One of the key instruments for using is research of customer satisfaction and Program of customer loyalty increasing.

Study of customer satisfaction and loyalty allows:

• To understand how customers perceive your Company;
• To ascertain if customer expectations correspond to Company’s proposals, to evaluate actual level of satisfaction and loyalty;
• To specify key factors influencing on the level of customer satisfaction and loyalty;
• To evaluate the effectiveness of your company activity in comparison with its competitors – to define the level of competitiveness;
• To estimate to what extent Company’s employees follow to standards of customer servicing.

On the basis of studies results company:

• Suggests services and goods that correspond to customer expectations and needs;
• Specifies spheres of activity foreground for improvements and avoids expenses that do not influence on quality increasing, customer satisfaction and loyalty;
• Controls the situation — more promptly and accurately reacts on problems arising at customers servicing;
• Increases profits at the expense of customer loyalty increasing.

Marketing researches during last 30 years convincingly show that there is continuous connection between customer satisfaction, loyalty and company profitability.

For example, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) (by the way, third bank under reliability according Bloomberg Markets magazine on May 2012) showed on practice that at increasing of customers’ loyalty by 2% net income is also increased by 2% (amount of growth is $70 million). Reference: ASQ Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty Conference 2000. J Tofani, CIBC.

Do you think that only CIBC may do it?