Saturday, December 22, 2007

Book Review – LOYALTY MYTHS


Book Review – LOYALTY MYTHS:
Hyped Strategies That Will Put You Out Of Business – And Proven Tactics That Really Work
H. Wallard, L. Aksoy, T.G. Vavra, T.L. Keiningham

One of the most common mistakes that companies make when considering Customer Loyalty is; they think Customer Loyalty is a project, rather than an ongoing process.

Customer Loyalty can be put in the 4th step in a successful CRM Strategy.
-The first step is, “Get Customer”, that means customer acquisition.
-The second step is “Keep Customer” that means, don’t allow your customers to quit your company.
-The third step is “Grow Customer” that means, increase their revenue, increase their profitability.
-The last step is “Customer Loyalty” that means, make your customer to fall in love with you.

The Loyalty Myths Book reviews 53 loyalty myths with lots of real example companies such as First Chicago, Tansaş, Ryanair.

"Did you ever wonder if some of those age old sayings about marketing are true? For instance, we’ve all heard “It costs five times more to acquire a new customer than to retain a current customer.” But does anyone have any proof of that? That is exactly what a group of authors set out to do in Loyalty Myths: Hyped Strategies That Will Put You Out of Business – and Proven Tactics That Really Work. The authors, Timothy L. Keiningham, Terry G. Varva, Lerzan Aksoy, and Henri Wallard are all experts in consumer loyalty and use their wealth of knowledge to dispel common myths and offer insight into what really works.

The book chooses and interesting format – the first six chapters are devoted to dismiss over fifty common ‘loyalty myths’ and the final two chapters are used to learning about why customers are loyal and how a loyalty program should be managed. Each of the ‘loyalty myths’ chapters contains several ‘myths’ grouped together by common themes, such as Loyalty Myths That Subvert Company Goals and Loyalty Myths Regarding Employees. The chapters both begin and end with an example pulled from industry that encompasses all of the myths mentioned in the chapter, with the actual myths discussed in the middle. "
Adam McFarland

As a summary, the writers claim that most of the common sayings up to now about customer loyalty are not true and the writers did research on these common sayings in detail and also supported by giving examples. One of the greatest examples is about First National Bank of Chicago. In the 90s, the company tried to overcome the low equity and started to charge $3 from each customer who went inside the bank for transactions. Other alternatives such as ATM or Phone are not popular during that period. The media posted lots of negative stories after the bank used the extra fee charging mehod, but the result was suprising.. the profits of the bank went up 28% with 80% of the transactions done electronically.
Fatih Noyan
105604187

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