Customer advocacy
Turning customers into advocates
Traditional measures of customer satisfaction have little to do with financial performance. According to research 80 percent of customers who switch suppliers express satisfaction with their previous supplier. Revenue growth has everything to do with ‘advocacy’, the extent to which customers or clients prefer a supplier and then refer friends and colleagues to it. For example, First Direct, the UK retail bank, has the highest level of customer satisfaction in the market and is recommended by its customers every five seconds gaining over one third of all new business from referral. Advocacy translates into increased share of market and higher levels of retention, all of which mean good news for your bottom-line. This is also true for professional service firms seeking to get upstream of the dreaded ‘Invitation to Tender’ trap.