Five lessons learnt from forging millions of customer relationships that are built to last
Building long-lasting customer relationships makes good business sense. But retaining customers is a multi-faceted challenge for business leaders. Brother’s Phil Jones and Chris Marshall share the lessons they learnt for fostering customer relationships that are built to last.
Working hard to build long lasting customer relationships has a meaningful impact on the bottom line.
Acquiring a new customer is anywhere from five to 25 times more expensive than retaining an existing one1. At the heart of retention is a strategy from brands for being customer centric. According to Deloitte, companies embracing such strategies are 60% more profitable compared to those that don’t2.
There’s good reason for business leaders to invest in customer relationships, beyond it being the moral and ethical choice to support customers as best as possible. But earning retention, and building strong relationships, represents a complex challenge for brands.
Nearly four in five (78%) people globally uncover things that attract them to brands after making their first purchase with them3, demonstrating how the product itself can influence only part of that relationship.
So, what are the industry secrets for customer retention? Brother UK Managing Director Phil Jones, and Brother International Europe Executive Director Chris Marshall, reflect on the key learnings from their careers on how businesses can foster customer relationships that are built to last.
1) Create a company DNA for customer centricity
Having the right company culture can be transformative in influencing positive customer relationships, with everyone through the business working in the customer’s best interest.
Phil Jones reflects on the importance of Brother’s approach to culture. He said: “Right the way back in 1994 when we were a challenger in the UK market, we always saw our ‘At your side’ ethos to be a core part of how we compete in the marketplace. That hasn’t changed.”
‘At your side’ has been Brother’s brand promise for decades, representing its ethos of creating customer relationships that are built to last.
Chris Marshall explains its significance, beyond being just a brand strapline. He added: “Everyone is encouraged to live by the ‘At your side’ brand promise: from the engineer that builds software to make installation incredibly easy, to the customer service agent handling calls.
“If every team lives by a central culture focused on customer outcomes, then businesses have the best chance at delivering the brilliant experience that drives retention.”
2) Take partners and intermediaries on your journey
Many businesses rely on a network of partners to deliver their product or service to their customers, and Brother is no different. But this adds to the challenge of building customer advocacy, when brands need third parties to harmonise on service quality and values.
Chris concedes that Brother’s approach of selling indirectly to customers can make investing in relationships more challenging. The business learnt how, to successfully deliver on its brand promise, it must extend ‘At your side’ to the DNA of its partner network too.
He said: “The majority of our business is done through intermediaries, so a lot of the direct relationships our customers have with us is managed by our partners. We learnt that our partners needed to come on the ‘At your side’ journey with us in order for it to be successful. Training is a core part of how we achieve that, alongside aligning with intermediaries that share our values.
“Our Brother approved partners must meet the right standards for customer service. Supporting them to provide that experience is part of our ongoing relationships with partners.”
Khalil Hussain, business manager at Printerbase advocated for Brother’s approach for training, he said: “The training and learning programmes offered by Brother are great and always get sales staff up to scratch in no time on new products and offerings.”
3) RACE to win the customer
Product reliability and availability, delivering convenience and meeting expectations are key facets to nurturing customer satisfaction, and to building strong relationships.
Phil Jones sees Brother UK as being in a RACE to win the customer. He explained: “First, users expect products that are reliable, and if anything goes wrong, they expect you to be there for them. Then, customers want good availability of products and the convenience to access them in the way they want to.
“Finally, expectation is a big part of it: how do we keep up to date with the way that we support our customers?”
The RACE must remain dynamic, however. It must evolve in line with advancing technology, macro trends, and how brands in other sectors influence how consumer and business decision makers want to engage with suppliers and vice versa.
For example, Chris Marshall looked ahead to how the RACE approach to customer centricity may change in future. He said: “We’ll likely see further evolution, rather than revolution. AI will help us to analyse our Managed Print Service customers’ usage in a more advanced way, allowing us to provide an even more tailored experience. Connected devices will send back data on whether our customers are getting the best ROI from their device, and whether they may be more suited to a different model that will cost them less to run to meet their needs.”
4) Become a listening organisation, and respond
Businesses that actively listen to customers are best placed at meeting their evolving needs. This includes understanding and acting on customer survey data; collating and learning from direct feedback from salespeople or customer service agents; and making data-led inferences from sales and retention figures.
Phil said: “As business leaders, we always need to be asking ourselves: are we genuinely listening to customers? Are we going out to speak with them and hearing what their pain points are? Are we seeing what’s going on outside of our industry? That’s key to communication, expectation and trust.
“It shouldn’t be all about sales on the KPI dashboard, either. How quickly are calls being answered, how many interventions are being made in the field, what are the renewal rates? Listening to these tell teams the real story about the customer experience for directing their approach.”
Becoming a listening organisation goes beyond the surface level of customers’ beliefs and needs too. For example, many people see print technology as being long-lasting. But listening more deeply, print users continue to value the security and trust provided by warranties and commitments from brands to servicing legacy products.
Outcomes like these will look different across the sectors. But Chris built on what active listening has changed at Brother. He said: “Brother rolled out some of the industry’s longest warranties on products of up to three years. In compliance with the UK’s Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure regulations, we also guaranteed software security updates until at least five years after the device was last in production, which is longer than other printer brands.
“We also listened to the sustainability ambitions of consumers and businesses, who wanted to contribute to circular economies. We responded by growing our pioneering remanufacturing operation, becoming the first print vendor to remanufacture both laser and inkjet cartridges free of charge. Brother won the coveted Blue Angel accolade for a toner cartridge comprising of mostly re-used parts.”
5) Measure different retention metrics
Repeat business and renewal rates are the KPIs for businesses to watch as they measure how successful they are in their endeavours to be customer centric.
But there’s other, industry-specific metrics leaders can watch. Chris reflects on the important bellwethers for Brother’s customer centricity: “The fact we have more than 90% of managed print service customers renewing with us at the end of contract demonstrates the level of service we’re delivering.
“But we can look at our success in our partner loyalty too – we’ve maintained relationships with partners for decades and they can trust that we’ll help them to overcome challenges and meet opportunities.”
A ‘restless’ approach to customer satisfaction
Ultimately, customer centricity requires a ‘restlessness’, Phil Jones summarises. He said: “Without a doubt, there’s a complacency issue when it comes to customer centricity in many companies. But businesses need to be continuously restless over whether customers are satisfied.”
Supporting customers as best as possible is responsible business, but it also delivers commercial advantages by creating a network of partner and customer advocates. Alexander Scott Barrett, partner manager at Computacenter advocated for Brother’s approach, he said: “Brother is a professional organisation filled with people that care and will go the extra mile, and this was the case when I visited their HQ in Audenshaw and was greeted by what seemed like a family. It is a pleasure to work with Brother.”
Business leaders can’t take customer retention for granted on the back of a good product alone. Fostering strong relationships requires a full spectrum of support for customers. It needs business leaders to nurture a strong company culture focused on creating excellent customer outcomes, to deliver on customers’ evolving expectations for convenience and reliability, and for businesses to continuously listen and evolve to meet changing needs.
Sources
1. Harvard Business Review, 2014 | The Value of Keeping the Right Customers
2. Deloitte, 2017 | Personalising the customer experience
3. Edelman, 2023 | Trust and Brands, the collapse of the sales funnel
