Share Of Wallet & Customer Satisfaction

Share of Wallet (SOW) is a term most marketers equate with customer loyalty. It is loosely defined as that part of a customer’s wallet, or total spending, he or she spends on your product or brand.

For example, if a customer buys 4 of the same products each month and 3 of those products are your company’s brand, you have a 75% SOW with that customer.

On the other hand, if a customer only buys 2 of the same products a month and 1 of them is yours, you’re losing 50% of that customer’s wallet each month to a competitor.

In the previous example, your customer is rather loyal in buying that one product he or she is purchasing from your brand each month, but that doesn’t mean you have his complete loyalty, particularly if he is still buying one product from a competitor, too.

Perhaps a better measure of SOW is customer satisfaction. If a customer is truly satisfied with your brand, you should have a larger SOW with that customer.

Customer satisfaction is a direct result of excellent customer service that is innovative and dynamic.

Jo Causon, CEO of the Institute of Customer Service, explains that UK companies will be able to achieve sustainable growth if they implement the following measures.

“They should report on their customer satisfaction measures as part of good corporate governance, use customer insight to help them develop innovative products and services across the whole value chain, discuss and focus on the customer in the board room, and make decisions that are actually based on the customer and see customer service as a predictive tool. If organizations do this, then it is my belief that the UK can become the world leader in service.”

Following are three tips on increasing customer satisfaction through innovative customer service:

1. Use technology. Today’s consumer is connected and on-line. Your company should be where your customers are. Use technology to start a dialogue and maintain a relationship. And use technology to streamline your processes. Mobile technology is particularly important.
2. Good isn’t good enough. Your customer service should be memorable. If customers remember how excellent your customer service is, they will spread the news, on-line and offline. The same goes for bad customer service.
3. Invest in your employees. A great customer service experience depends solely on the skills that your employees have. Educate your employees in cutting edge trends and empower them to represent your brand. You can be assured that each customer contact will be handled professionally and skilfully.

If you’re looking for innovative training courses that position your employees to develop new and practical ideas for interacting with customers, please give me a call on 0207 043 1582. Our workshops surrounding customer satisfaction win awards and we’d love for you and your organisation to be a part of that.