Survey Reveals Companies Are Failing To Maximise Customer Retention

Online, August 15, 2011 (Newswire.com) - A new survey from Collinson Latitude, the experts in travel industry ancillary revenues, reveals many businesses are seriously failing to exploit the full range of options available to maximise customer acquisition and retention.

Although most respondents to the survey described gaining and keeping customers as a very high priority for their companies at present, 33% of respondents admitted not offering any enhancements or add-ons to help market the core product/service. When enhancements add so much value to a company's offering, this feedback is quite a concern.

Collinson Latitude director Janet Titterton says: "It's remarkable that so many companies continue to overlook the many products and services available to help win, and keep, customers. From loyalty reward programmes and subscription-based membership programmes, through to online auctions and prize draws, the range of innovative products to improve customer engagement is wide and varied for almost every business sector. The survey reveals 61% of respondents whose companies offer enhancements to the core service believe doing so differentiates their business from the competition, either "very much" [33%] or "somewhat" [28%]. Clearly, companies that do not offer such enhancements are falling behind their competitors.

"As the economy recovers from the depths of the downturn, every company needs to think hard about how to retain customers who are being presented with a growing choice of providers. It takes an awful lot of time and money to win back lost customers, but innovative enhancements, added to the core service, create value and can often be fairly rapidly deployed, at low-cost, to maintain the loyalty of the customers you already hold. Why then are so many companies overlooking these opportunities to simultaneously increase ancillary revenues and customer satisfaction? 36% of our survey respondents cited cost or resource availability as a barrier to selling add-ons. In fact, enhancements can quickly be designed and deployed by a third-party at low-cost, bringing immediate ancillary revenue gains.

"It is incredible to see how many of the survey respondents [29%] have never even considered offering membership benefit packages to loyal customers. There is clearly a great deal of untapped potential for companies to be introducing innovative and exciting products and programmes that really engage customers on a consistent basis."

The new Collinson Latitude survey gathers the opinions of executives from industries including travel and hotels, publishing, telecommunications, utilities, financial services, aviation and retail. The survey sought to discover how widely companies are using enhancements and add-ons to the core product/service, and the extent to which doing so is proving beneficial for themselves and their customers.