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No one likes to lose business, especially if you don’t know why a customer has gone to your competitor. Customer Monitor is a valuable new client-retention tool with some powerful advantages. Chris Pescott, CEO of market research company Perceptive, talks about how it could help you...

What is Customer Monitor?

It's a word-of-mouth measurement application designed to increase a company's retention of customers. It essentially makes a business more profitable by highlighting customers at risk of leaving and helping the company improve its overall level of service.

How can it help a business?

Of your customers who are unhappy, only 8% will ever tell you; the other 92% will simply leave and you won't get the chance to put matters right.

With Customer Monitor you can find out who's had a bad experience, identify them and rescue them before they leave. Stopping a customer leaving is far easier and cheaper than trying to attract new customers. There's also a strong body of evidence that says if you listen and act on feedback, you can turn extreme detractors into extreme promoters. A key goal is to make your customers evangelistic about your business because the average happy customer is likely to tell three people that you're good, but upset customers will tell 11; and with social media that 11 could translate to 1100. SMEs need to listen to their customers so they can swoop in and fix those relationships.

What makes Customer Monitor so powerful?

It just cuts to the chase. Many customer feedback mechanisms are very cumbersome and complex. But, really, a business just needs to know three things: How likely are you to recommend me? Why did you score me the way you did? How likely are you to come back? The vast majority of customer feedback programmes are annual client surveys, but Customer Monitor is a regular poll so it's a real sound check - it's very quick and more overview driven.

What measurement tools does Customer Monitor use?

Customer Monitor incorporates a number of different tools, which give solid, clear measures on a long-term basis so you know how your company is performing over time. MARCS ranks your 10 Most At Risk Customers each month, so you can quickly identify those that need love and go and salvage the relationship.

Net Promoter Score (NPS) offers a way of understanding the degree to which your customers are likely to recommend your business to their friends and colleagues. Customer monitor also has a loyalty score built into it and analyses the narrative of what your customers are saying, including why they're likely to recommend you and the likelihood of them making a repeat purchase.

What types of businesses can use Customer Monitor?

Companies in every industry and of every size. It's designed for a business with just a couple of staff right through to major nationwide companies, and being a cloud-based application, it's not bulky.

Hayes Knight is among the many users of Customer Monitor.  CEO Matthew Bellingham shares his thoughts…

Why was Customer Monitor a good fit for Hayes Knight?

Beyond the numbers - this is our promise. For us, part of going beyond the numbers means building lasting relationships with our clients and we do this by exceeding their service expectations. As with any company, knowing what your customers are thinking and how they feel about your business is the first step. Being accountants we are familiar with the expression 'time is money'. We're aware that our clients have busy lives, and we wanted a cost-effective way to monitor client feedback that was unobtrusive, quick, simple and did not require a huge amount of internal resource. Customer Monitor was the perfect fit.  Professionalism sits at the core of our culture, so the fact that Customer Monitor is backed by a full-service market research company was also an important factor.

What has been the impact?

The insights have been fantastic. One of the most satisfying things about Customer Monitor is that by identifying our most at-risk clients we've been able to take immediate action and save relationships.

The system also gives us a big-picture view, allowing us to pinpoint opportunities for improvement at a firm, team and even a director level. This information is fed into our Client Focus Group and they then brainstorm solutions. The flipside of this is that we can also see what we're doing well and share and celebrate this with the team. More importantly, we now have a measure that allows us to monitor and compare our performance, allowing us to not only see the impact of any changes we make but also to set performance targets for the future.

To find about introducing Customer Monitor into your business, contact us.

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