Mastering Customer Loyalty: Strategies for Retention, Brand Growth, and Niche Marketing

Unlock the secrets to customer loyalty with Ali, the brain behind "Keep Your Customers," who joins us to spill the beans on her proven retention strategies. Our chat traverses the landscape of Alignment Growth Strategies, where Allie's wisdom takes center stage, bringing to light how the internal process of a company can dramatically affect the service delivered to its customers. The conversation stretches from the influence of every single employee, regardless of their role, to Todd's view of the uniquely pivotal positions of flight attendants and pilots in shaping brand perception. It's an eye-opener that will change how you view every interaction within your business.

With customer celebration as the linchpin of connection, we dissect how personal touches, akin to those of Chewy's masterful approach, can make waves in the digital realm. The episode is a wake-up call that nudges businesses to break free from the acquisition addiction, focusing instead on the gold mine of nurturing existing relationships. High churn rates? We tackle this head-on by showing the hidden advantages of a retention-centered approach, providing a roadmap to not only prevent customer loss but also to boost sales and solidify your customer base. 

Finally, we address the art of niche marketing and its role in cutting through the noise of a crowded marketplace. By sharing actionable steps from Allie's book, we equip you with a scalpel to define and reach your ideal customer, ensuring your business messages hit home and your growth strategies stay aligned with your customer-centric vision. We round off with an invitation to dive deeper into the strategies that will craft a riveting customer journey, urging listeners to connect on LinkedIn for an ongoing exchange of insights. Whether you're a fledgling startup or a seasoned enterprise, this episode offers a blueprint for brand and business growth that resonates with every listener's desire for success.

Transcript

Todd: 0:01

Welcome to Todd's Talks, where I help you design more of a spot. Not the life I designed for you, but the life you designed. Today I've got a special guest with me and it's been a little while since I've done an episode with a guest, so this is nice to be able to have. Allie could be with me today and she's the author of Keep your Customers, and I'll let her tell you a little bit about herself. Welcome, allie. How are you doing?

Ali: 0:41

Thanks. I'm great and really, really happy to be here. Todd, thank you for having me on the show, let's see. So I work in the realm of customer retention and so my focus professionally is in how do you help companies make sure that once they get a customer's post sale, that that customer stays with them for a really long time, buys more, tells all their friends and hence the name of the book Keep your Customers? And I do that work from. You know the perspective of consulting and training with my company alignment growth strategies. I've been doing this work for a really long time. Graduated from business school a while ago and started doing this work right after business school. And let's see, I don't know. Live in Boston, husband, two dogs what else can I tell you?

Todd: 1:39

Love it. So my first question with alignment growth strategies being your company, how did how did you get involved in customer retention? How did you get involved in alignment Well, aligning people's growth strategies? What brought you to that point?

Ali: 1:59

So right after business school, I worked for the New York Times Company.

Ali: 2:04

They had a corporate strategy department which was kind of like an internal consulting group, and I was asked to be on a call center project, and that was not considered to be a super popular assignment at the time.

Ali: 2:22

You know, the call center was in New Jersey, the company was in Times Square and it was, you know, classic sort of windowless warehouse kind of a call center.

Ali: 2:33

And to make a long story short, what I discovered in the process of that engagement was that you had the New York Times Company, this amazing, globally recognized brand, and we were paying our call center employees less than the Burger King up the street. And so not only were people not fighting to come work for the New York Times Company, but as soon as an opportunity came up to go flip burgers, they were quitting and leaving, and I know right. And that, along with a lot of other things that I discovered in working on that project, brought me this sort of big realization, which is that when you want to have good customer outcomes, you have to design good employee processes, and that is really the crux of what underlies a good customer experience. And so you know, the work that I do at alignment is focused on what is the thing you can do inside your company in order to create these wonderful customer experiences that inspire people to stay longer, spend more and tell their friends.

Todd: 3:48

So this is an interesting discussion, especially for me, because in the last 24 hours, 48 hours, we, my daughter and I were having this exact sort of customer service, customer experience discussion, because she was going to interview to be a flight attendant and in the flight attendant world, it's all customer service and what they do can directly impact whether people fly with that airline again. I, at the same time, on my day job, I'm a pilot for Delta and so because of that, things that I do and the way that I act when I'm around the customers can have a direct relationship with whether people want to come fly with us again and I think that our company does a really good job of promoting the family friendly. You're part of the Delta family. So my question with regard to customer service is whether the top three things that companies can do to improve what? To improve their brand, to improve the customer experience?

Ali: 5:08

So I love that question. What I'll say first is a Delta is my airline of choice, so I'm more familiar with Delta. But also you know, when I think about both being a flight attendant and a pilot, it's a really great example of the kinds of challenges that companies often have in thinking about customer experience, because you know it is really important what flight attendants do and what pilots do in the customer interaction. But you could also make the argument that the thing that they do most is keep passengers safe, fly the plane, all of those critical safety and you know, function jobs, and that in some ways you could make the argument that that customer experience piece is off to the side or secondary. But and that's what happens in a lot of companies, right, like people think that it's like, oh, but what I really do is sales, what I really do is marketing, what I really do is product, what I really do is this other thing, and they don't really think of them, of their job, as being a customer job. But yet, like you just pointed out, if it's all a customer job, no matter what it is that you do, it is vitally important to think of yourself as being a part of the customer experience and a valued part of the customer experience. So the first thing that I would say to answer your question is to instill that in your team that everybody's job is vitally important for delivering a great customer experience. You don't just have one person who is the customer guy, right, and if you have that mentality inside a company, then you're probably A putting way too much pressure on that guy, because they can't be responsible for everything that every other department does or says, but also it's really a sort of blinders on kind of way of thinking about the customer. So that's the first thing.

Ali: 7:18

The second I sort of alluded to just before, which is we oftentimes don't give our employees a clear and predictable path to being successful with customers, and that's what they need. So at Alignment we help companies develop playbooks so that everybody inside the company knows okay, I need to follow these steps in order to deliver the customer experience that I want people to have. If you don't give your employees the play, then you're either relying on their good instincts, in which case they may or may not have good instincts, and everybody's good instincts may be a little bit different, and you don't want that. You want the your company way of doing things, and so that would be probably the number two thing. And then the third is to be clear about what that journey looks like for a customer, so that you know where you need a playbook.

Ali: 8:23

What is the point in the customer's journey that you want to have a specific thing that you want your team to do on behalf of the customer? So, for example, when flight attendants greet passengers when they come onto the plane, you need to be clear like, okay, this is a moment that we want to be really thoughtful about and we want to do a deep dive, not just because we want it to feel friendly when a passenger gets on a plane, but I suspect that there's also some real important functions in that greeting. It is, you know, is this passenger looking unruly? Are they inebriated? You know there's, there's function there. It's not just, you know, smiles and friendly, right. So you have to be thoughtful about, okay, what are the points along the customer's journey where we and we call those inflection points, that moment in time where you have an opportunity to enhance the customer relationship you're either going to build loyalty or you're going to block loyalty, and we want to make sure that the company is always on the path to building loyalty.

Todd: 9:36

Excellent, I love it. One of the examples that I've seen in my last couple of weeks is we have had some adorable little kids that come onto the plane and they're just big, big-eyed. And so what do we do? We invite them hey, have you ever seen the inside of a cockpit? And let them come in and look and then give them their own set of wings to get on the end. The parents almost always just oh, thank you so much, you just made their day and their trip. And I love seeing that sheer joy, especially because a lot of times these kids are timid it may be their first flight ever and just being able to do a little thing because it doesn't take much, doesn't take a lot of time and it doesn't cost anything but those little personal experiences that the company or we when I say the company, it's we who are working in the company take ownership of our little part to make it somebody's life that much better. Well, we just gain the customer for life until somebody else screws it up.

Ali: 10:54

That's absolutely true. And the power I talk about that as being the power of celebration and I actually talk about that quite a lot in Keep your Customers. When you can find those moments where you can give a customer a moment of celebration, a moment where they just get to enjoy the experience of being your customer, not because it's the business of business but because it is the business of connection that's where you build relationships, that's where you build trust. At the end of the day, we are all like we're just for people and we're still wired for connection, no matter how many Zoom meetings we have and emails we fire off without necessarily thinking about the person on the other end. When you can create those moments of connection, they're really powerful.

Todd: 11:48

Okay, so that brings me to a question. So many businesses and a lot of people have gone from in-store shopping or in you know, going to the business, into the online realm. More businesses are doing most of their work online. How do you make that connection, or how would a business make that connection with the customer when all they have is online interaction?

Ali: 12:23

That's a great question and there are companies that do it really well. So it matters whether or not your company is a business to business company or a business to consumer company, and so you know different companies are going to engage differently. I think it's easier in a business to business world to find those moments of connection because you are there's often more reason for you all to talk to each other in a business to business world. The company that I think about, that does it really well in the business to consumer world is Chewy. So Chewy, you know they have ordered from them before, so they do certain things that are really excellent. They celebrate the holidays.

Ali: 13:14

So, historically, I have received a holiday card from Chewy and it is signed, you know, by the team, so it feels personal. And I've even received from Chewy a condolence card when they knew, based on some customer behavior, that one of my pets had passed away. They also do a fantastic job when you call into their customer support. So it's an example of I don't ever kid myself when I get a card from Chewy, right, I don't think, oh, somebody in the corporate office is really thinking about me, allie Cunby and my dog. You know, I'm not confused. It is all automated. None of those cards are signed by an actual human, but what it shows is that the company cares enough to prioritize this and so, even though it is an automated function, it is a reflection of their values, and those are the kinds of things that you can do, and what's amazing is how low the bar is as a company. So many companies skip this part. They skip the connection part, they skip the celebration part. So if you do anything, you are way ahead of the curve.

Todd: 14:37

Well, that's awesome, that's a great idea and it, like you said, it doesn't take much and it can be automated. Right One of the areas especially as we get towards the holidays, everybody is looking to find more customers not just keep them, but find them. And so how would a company stand out to be able to not only attract the customers but then to keep them afterwards? I believe I know that's a very broad question.

Ali: 15:21

Yeah, it is, but I got an answer. So many companies focus on customer attraction, they focus on the front end sales and they put that customer experience and customer retention in a backseat. They don't put nearly the amount of time, energy and effort into retention and that is a critical mistake. It is a really expensive mistake for companies as well, because if you're only focused on getting people in the door, then you're probably in this cycle where you get somebody in the door, they buy from you once you don't really do anything to nurture the relationship or build the relationship to begin with, so they don't feel any loyalty to you, so they spin out and they buy from the next guy the next time.

Ali: 16:10

Well, if you're focusing on retention and you keep that customer instead, then the next time you get a new customer. That new customer, instead of filling the shoes of somebody who just churned out, they're a net new. And so now, instead of having like one customer slot that you're filling and refilling and refilling because of churn, you have two customers, then three customers, then four customers, and so it's additive. And also, once you're building that relationship, each one of those customers, as they come in, are more and more inclined to buy more, and so you create this multiplicative effect and it's really like a growth flywheel. So instead of that oh gosh, how do we get people in the door? It's better business to be focusing on how do we keep them and make them grow.

Todd: 17:08

That goes so well with a lot of other things that I've learned over the years because I've been a part of several different sales, direct sales companies, multi-level marketing and one of the companies that do it right really focus not on just the getting the customers but on the retention and getting the customer experience after they become part of the company and making sure that the deals and the experiences and everything just builds and builds and builds so that people want to stay. And the companies that I've seen that basically focus on getting new customers, they get a wide base, but then the people don't stay, and so the only people making money in those companies are the people that are really good at attraction but aren't often very good at retention because they don't focus on keeping their clients, keeping their people. And so I totally agree you have to focus on not just the attraction but on the retention in order to really grow in your business.

Ali: 18:30

Yeah, it's actually even worse than that, because what can happen in a lot of companies is it costs money to attract the customers. It costs money in terms of marketing dollars. It costs money in terms of, maybe, a sales person's time. There's lots of cost associated with attracting the customer. If you're losing them as soon as you're getting them, then you can be doing all of that work to bring in a customer to actually serve them at a loss, and so it's not even just as bad as oh, we broke even on that guy. It's actually you lose money if all you're doing. You oftentimes lose money if all you're doing is focusing on the front end.

Todd: 19:16

Well, isn't that why they say that 90% of entrepreneurs go out of the business within the first year, or 90% of businesses go out of the business within a year or two is because they end up shelling out more money than they bring in in trying to attract customers? So one of the things that we can look at is what about that 10% that succeed? What are they doing different?

Ali: 19:47

There's lots and lots of answers to that question.

Ali: 19:50

So I, for a time I was a professor of entrepreneurship at Purdue University, and so I've been upfront and personal with lots of companies that as as they've tried to start up, and sometimes, you know, there's lots of reasons why Companies don't get off the ground. It could be the product, it could be market fit, you know, but when it comes to customers, I think it's either that they don't do a good job of retention, but, generally speaking, it's also because they don't know who they're serving. There's a lack of clarity around the, around the ideal customer. And so if you don't know who you're serving, or if you think that you're serving everyone and you end up kind of serving no one, it's very hard these days to cut through all the noise of marketing messages out there. You know, we see so many marketing messages, we hear so many marketing messages. We're attached to a device that we hold in our hand. Most of the time that is nothing but a marketing message machine, and you've got to be able to pause for just one second.

Todd: 21:07

I'm sorry, but the recording I'm in a bad signal for a second and so the recording is paused. So let me get to a. Okay, we're back. All right, when do you want me to start? Just wherever you just left off.

Ali: 21:38

So what companies may fail to thrive? For two reasons. One is that they're trying to. They don't create that relationship with their customers to begin with. So it's the classic like they come in, they go out turn. The other is that companies may not clearly articulate who they're selling to. And what I have seen as a professor of entrepreneurship is that companies say, oh well, everybody wants what we have, and when you're trying to sell to everybody, you end up selling to nobody. And in today's world where there are a gazillion marketing messages being hurled at us all the time, you know we're connected to our phones, which are nothing but marketing message machines. We get so many of these marketing messages and you have to be able to cut through the clutter. And if you don't know who you're talking to, you don't know how to say the message in the way that it's going to scream at the people who need to buy what you sell.

Todd: 22:45

So I get it. Yeah, I've been through. I've been through the Dean Grats, yosi, tony Robbins course and several others. That's one of the main things that they preach is know your ideal client, niche it down, find out exactly who you were selling to, because otherwise, if you're selling to everyone, you're selling to no one, because you're not going to find that niche client when there's three billion people connected to the phone, right, right, you know just Facebook alone, three or four billion people on there, and if you try to sell to everybody, you're going to end up selling to no one.

Ali: 23:34

Right, I mean just today. Like everybody, I get 9,653 emails a day and I was thinking to myself because there's a lot of delete, delete, delete and unsubscribe, unsubscribe, unsubscribe. But I got an email today and I immediately was like, oh yeah, I want to click on that. And it was because the subject of it was like oh, that is something I'm interested in. I'm actually planning to think about that and do something about that in the next couple of weeks. So, yes, click.

Ali: 24:08

And you know, it's knowing what you deliver, being really, really clear about what you do, which sounds like it should be obvious. But it's amazing how many people aren't actually clear about what they do. Especially, I find a lot of sort of coaches and consultants will sort of say like, I do everything for everybody and you know, if you don't have a clearly articulated offer, it's very hard for people to think, oh, this is a problem that I need to solve. And if you try and be too broad in how you message about it, like you said, you need a niche and you can grow from your niche. You know you don't only ever have to serve your niche, but you know, if you speak very clearly to a niche, it's easy for them to hear you.

Todd: 24:58

I totally get that. So should somebody want to learn more about what it is you do, how to reach you, and give me maybe a couple of minutes blurb about what is your Keep your Customers book, how would they do that and where can they find you?

Ali: 25:20

Sure. So the company website is AlignmentForGrowthcom, and I should say that the company name is spelled AlignMintMint, and the reason is because when you plant mint, it grows like crazy, and when something is awesome, it's a mint condition, and when you make a lot of money, you make a mint. So that alignment of your company plus the growth of mint is AlignmentGrowthStrategycom. And the book Keep your Customers there is a website for it, keepyourcustomersbookcom, but you can also just go to wherever books are sold. And the thing I really love about the book, and why I think it's a valuable resource for companies, is that I talk about not just why customer attention is important, but what are the steps that you can follow. And it's something that people have got.

Ali: 26:26

You know, the feedback that I've gotten about the book is that there's lots of business books out there that talk about theory, but then you finish the book and you're like, well, yeah, but how do I do it? And in the book, yeah, so in the book I go through and I do talk about theory, and then I talk about specific applications and there's case studies and all that, and then there at the end it's a real like here are the steps to follow to start your own journey toward building a better customer experience. There's a, there's a concept in the book that I call the bullseye, and it is effectively an articulation of who you want to be on behalf of your customers. So lots of companies have a mission and vision and values, and that's all about you, the company. This takes that idea and twists it a little bit and makes it a customer oriented process, and so and that's something that I go into great detail about in the in the book, so that is the company to provide more value Right.

Ali: 27:31

Yes, exactly, and when you are being thoughtful about your customers and you are being aligned in your organization, then it sets you up much more effectively to be a better company on behalf of your customers right To be a better advocate, to deliver a better experience. Oh yeah, and then, aside from that, people can find me on LinkedIn. I just ask that you know when your listeners come and find me on LinkedIn. Just please let let me know that you heard me on Todd's podcast, so that I know to connect with you. I love connecting with people that have heard me on podcasts. I also get a ton of solicitations on LinkedIn, so I tend to not accept connections unless I know where they're from. So please, please, come find me and just please let me know that you heard me here.

Todd: 28:21

Well, that's awesome. Thank you for your time and for coming on being willing to talk, because I think it's important for people that are in the business realm and in the pod talks it's for people in you know. It is actually for the general and the specific, because each episode deals with, with a specific topic, an area that somebody, whether it's in their personal or the professional life, can improve on, and so so I love having guests like you that can come on and talk to business owners and say look, here is somewhere that here is a way, specifically, that you can improve your customer experience, build your brand so that people want to stick with you and keep coming back, because that's how you will be able to grow as a business. And Ali, thank you for your time and People go out to her website in the show notes and go get her book as well, so thank you so much for being on here.

Ali: 29:31

Thank you, it was absolutely a pleasure.

Todd: 29:35

You're welcome. This is hot talk. This is been my pleasure to talk to Valley that's me and, as always, we help you design the life that you desire. Not the life that we want to design for you, but the life you desire. Take your picks from the different areas that we provide and design the life of your dreams and, as always, have a blessed day.