IB Woman
Issue No. 34 - April/May 2007
Is customer loyalty the holy grail?
by Penelope Herbert
If you don’t have customers, you don’t have a business, but how many business owners neglect to implement or even think about managing their customer relations?
According to Cathy Allington, quite a few.
“Customer Relationship Management is all about personal relationships, “ says Cathy, MD of Grow Your Own Business, “and that’s no different from the relationships we build with our friends and family.
“Most business owners don’t undertake ‘relationship marketing’ and as such they are missing out on mountains of business.”
With a background in financial planning, Cathy’s previous business had 3,000 clients. Keeping in touch on a personal level that was meaningful to the client seemed overwhelming.
The seminal moment for Cathy was one day when she was opening her mail and a client had sent her change-of-address details. The client asked that Cathy inform relevant contacts within her system.
“I thought about how stressful moving was and how many people and companies you have to contact when you do move,” Cathy relates.
“I sent our client a note saying I had passed on her changed details to relevant organisations in our system and also included a tin of Twinings tea saying ‘have a cuppa with our compliments’. That gesture earned us $6,000 in additional commission.”
And while the company spent $150,000 annually to attract new clients, they spent very little time and money on keeping current clients.
She decided that a better system for thanking and keeping clients had to be developed.
“I knew there were CRM systems around but they seemed so complex and expensive,” says Cathy.
“At the request of a number of clients, we developed a Microsoft Outlook system that integrates with existing accounting and point of sale systems so it’s easy for a business to start using it.
“I started working with wineries, and then retail ...
