Customer Journey = Customer Loyalty | OPTECH Footnotes
Customer journey = Customer loyalty
Funnel footnotes are summaries of cool lessons, trends, and insights our team gains from multifamily industry events. We package up some of the things that inspire us and share that with you in a compact format for learning-on-the-go.
“Surprise and delight” has long been the advice of well-known consumer brands when it comes to winning customer loyalty. And, while that remains true, there’s much more to be done in cultivating customer loyalty—particularly in the multifamily industry where competition can be fierce and churn is a reality. Today, it’s about recognizing and catering to a client’s hierarchy of needs. By putting the resident at the center of your decision making—including operations, data, and measurement, you will gain a better understanding of what residents care about. If you give them more of what they want, you will increase revenues.
It’s everybody’s job to create a positive customer experience—not just the leasing team or the marketing department.
Along the customer journey, there are numerous touchpoints. Develop empathy for the customer and how they experience your brand. Define the touchpoints that matter most. What needs to be done differently or better to influence the overall outcome? It’s everybody’s job to create a positive customer experience—not just the leasing team or the marketing department.
Traditionally, there has been more energy devoted to winning over the prospect and less on current residents. In fact, churn is an accepted reality of our industry. What if we increased our focus on current residents and what they want? What if we cultivated “raving fans” out of our current residents, resulting in their brand loyalty for life—regardless of moving from one market to another? There is a positive network effect of a strong branded experience and we become a stronger industry when our customers do our marketing for us as brand advocates.
What if we cultivated “raving fans” out of our current residents, resulting in their brand loyalty for life—regardless of moving from one market to another?
As more of our interactions with customers and prospects are moving to automation, it’s important to own the brand of that experience and improve personal interactions. Ease of use, mobility, and self-service capabilities are all critical. Remember, the customer doesn’t know when they’re using a third-party platform—so it’s critical that you view every touchpoint in the customer journey as your responsibility. One way to do this is by creating a scorecard with the following criteria: satisfaction, revenue/conversion rate, cost element. By doing this, you can also create KPIs for your team to measure their accountability for cultivating customer loyalty across the organization.
To learn more about Funnel and how we can help increase customer satisfaction and customer loyalty for your organization, explore our Products page.