“There is proven ROI in doing whatever you can to turn your customers into advocates for your brand or business. The way to create advocates is to offer superior customer service,” – Gary Vaynerchuk
The world of commerce thrives on profit because the profit motive drives enterprises to attain business outcomes. Beyond profit, every business should invest in long-term business relationships in an effort to draw the maximum ROI from each customer. This relationship with each individual customer should be carefully nurtured and must be premised on the belief that each customer is a human being and deserves the full attention of the business. We must note that such an approach hinges on customer engagement and every business should invest efforts to boost this strategy even as the business enterprise scales up and diversifies into a large conglomerate. We may note that the forging of business bonds can be based on conversations, interactions, friendship, and professionalism because these bonds bear the potential to maximise the ROI from every customer.
Customer loyalty should be the watchword for every serious business enterprise and though it maybe intangible, it does offer significant returns in terms of generating the maximum ROI from customers. For instance, a furniture making business can choose to develop customer loyalty through a variety of techniques. The business managers of the said enterprise can offer customers specialty services on the merchandise in an effort to retain their custom. These services may include periodic upkeep and maintenance offers, special tints of wood polishing, wood treatments to keep infestations at bay, free estimates on the look and feel of furniture that best suits a client’s living room, etc. We must note that these efforts can be deployed skilfully, to win the long-term loyalty of the customer and this can significantly boost business outcomes at the said enterprise. In addition, customer loyalty also helps a business to create and sustain a business reputation and mark its presence in competitive markets. These are important prerequisites for doing business in any territory and therefore, the business must work to achieve these with alacrity. Further, we may observe that the tactic of engendering long-term customer loyalty helps the said enterprise to extract maximum ROI from each customer.
An astute business operator may consider investing in a strategy that offers customers priority access to new products and services in a bid to attract maximum ROI from each customer. We may consider the case of a white goods retail business to illustrate the point. The white good business typically undergoes brisk business around the year, but new technologies and new products appear only a few times each year. The said business operator may offer a special preview to select customers in an attempt to woo their custom and generate the maximum ROI. We must note that such campaigns that hinge on preferential treatment must be calibrated meticulously so as to achieve the desired effect. Further, sales volumes play a critical role in selling and therefore, the said business operator must endeavour to expand the ambit of such promotional sales tactics.
E-commerce businesses are increasingly dominating the shopping landscape in most urban areas across the world. The growing density of such business operations makes it imperative for each e-commerce operator to expand business operations in an effort to stay relevant in the market. We could say that the extraction of maximum ROI remains one of the immediate business goals for such operators. To that end, the competitive e-commerce business enterprise may create a promise to deliver products within 24 hours to the customer’s doorstep. This promise can emerge as a clear value proposition for the said business and may help it to etch its special position in the market. In addition, the promise of 24-hour delivery may be viewed as an extension of the robust, no-nonsense approach to business endorsed and practiced by the said e-commerce operator. Further, the strategy can help the business to win additional customers because the last mile connectivity remains a contested space in most e-commerce businesses. We may note that these factors can combine to help the business extract maximum ROI from its customers.
The number of dollars spent by each customer remains a critical peg in assessing the ROI of a business. Therefore, every business should seek to encourage its customers to spend significantly as part of its strategy to boost the maximum ROI per customer. For instance, a large grocery store operator may choose to offer substantial discounts on its merchandise to customers on specific days of the week. This represents an easy strategy of boosting business income per customer because the volume of business transactions is bound to peak on the said days of the week. This tactic of weekly stock clearing could coincide with the days when the business warehouse takes delivery of fresh stock from its vendors and suppliers. We note that this approach to conducting business lies well within the legal and moral norms of conducting business. One of significant outcomes of this strategy is that the business extracts the maximum ROI per customer on a regular weekly basis and this may help the enterprise to thrive. In addition to the above, business managers at the grocery may speak to customers regarding their choice of products and incorporate the information into their weekly orders, thereby furthering the scope of attaining maximum ROI from certain customers.
Digital business operators can craft special strategies to achieve maximum ROI from their customers. We must note that the digital domain offers its own set of promises, limitations, and a special brand of excitement. For instance, a taxi-based ride sharing operator may choose to boost the ROI per customer by offering group discounts. This approach will naturally boost the number of passengers per ride while reducing the expense incurred by each passenger. However, over the long-term, this approach is likely to attract more passengers to the business because of the obvious benefits offered to passengers. Meanwhile, the business operator gains in terms of the sheer volumes of new passengers that avail the service. We may note that the group discount strategy offered by the business may be refined keeping in mind various inputs, such as time of day, locations, depth of the group, holidays, estimated distance of the ride, among others. These metrics can help the said business to attain maximum ROI per passenger.
In the preceding paragraphs, we have surveyed some of the techniques that can be deployed by businesses to extract maximum ROI from customers. The impulse towards such actions should emanate from the business leadership because ultimately, leadership is responsible for business performance. Every business leader or corporate chieftain must appreciate the fact that each customer represents a valuable business opportunity to the wider enterprise and therefore, the business owes it to itself to extract the maximum ROI from individual customers. The techniques used to achieve this end may vary from one business to the next, but the intent should reflect in every business transaction. Further, businesses should realise that the unforgiving nature of modern competitive markets makes ROI a critical aspect of business performance. Each lost opportunity to realise a higher ROI represents a portion of profit ceded to the competition and this does not portend well for any business enterprise.
