Lesson 3º

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fundamental Loyalty Factors

As previously mentioned, loyalty depends on three fundamental factors: client satisfaction, the barriers to change and the perception of the competition.

a) Client satisfaction, the first fundamental factor, depends on the comparison that the client makes on the expectations they had before consuming and the perception after buying. The consumer compares what they expected before eating in a restaurant with that they perceive after eating in the restaurant.

Therefore, they are subjective valuations related to what the client expected to receive before being attended to, with what they thought after buying. As the company Xerox explains "the loyalty of those clients that are absolutely satisfied is six times more than those that are just satisfied".

b) The exit barriers are the second fundamental aspect when retaining clients. Think about how easy it is to get a telephone line and then think about how complicated it is to cancel it. Loyalty also depends on the barriers or costs to change. This loyalty is not authentic as the client is staying with us because of the high costs to change provider.

c) The third fundamental factor is the value perceived of what the compeitors have to offer. The consumer values different options that other competing companies offer. A loyal client maintains the relationship with our company without evaluating, everytime that he buys something, the possible options that a competitor offers. The moment the competitor gets the loyal client to evaluate alternatives, his satisfaction with my company plus the cost of changing should be greater than the evaluation of the competition to get him to stay loyal. If I close my bar for a few days becuase of holidays, the clients will most likely try different bars and at the end of the holidays they will evaluate whether to remain loyal to me or not.

We should be aware of what our competitors have to offer, analyzing their strengths and weaknesses. Differentiate what we offer from what the compeitors are offering. If our product is perceived by the consumers as exactly the same as the competition, we will get into a price war. It is important that the consumer perceives our product or service as being different from the competitors, if we don't want to compete in a price war.

In the bank services, the reputation, brand image and the services, which are difficult to copy allow us to differentiate ourselves from the competition. A typical strategy to differentiate yourself it to add additional services and provide certain services which are better than those of the competition.

Believing we are better than the compeition. These marginal efforts that we carry out should be highlighted so that they transform into a strong advantage point. The office director that carries out the tax declarations is loyal to the clientele with an additional service that the competitors will find difficult to copy. These loyal clients are less sensitive to price, you can charge them more and provide a greater margin for a longer period of time.

As Francisco Elvira explains "the key to loyalty consists in offering more to a client than what he pays. It is important that he perceives this".