Customers: Implementing relationship measures

In the last Marketing class we were talking about the relationship approach to clients. There are several actions that companies can take to build and improve their relationship with customers, and believe me when I say that people can get really creative.

Some ideas might sound very good and by implementing them we can be sure that the customer’s reaction will be as expected (i.e. extreme happiness and willingness to maintain the relationship with us), especially when we are talking about price reductions.

Well, let’s say that you selected a segment of customers to apply a price reduction because they are very valuable and the competition is giving you a hard time, but the reduction only applies if the customers reach a certain level of sales three months in a row. The objective of this action is to establish a relationship with good customers.

When you come up with an idea like this one it is very important to organise the implementation process. First thing is to let the finance department know what you are going to do, so that they can apply the price discount to the customers that reach the desired sales level.

Since the discount will be effective after 3 months you have to remind the finance department to apply the price reduction when the time comes, because they will be busy with other issues and probably the last thing in their minds is to implement that crazy marketing idea.

It is also very important to let the customers know about the price incentive and explain to them in detail how it works, especially when the idea is a bit complicated (like in this case). If you don’t manage to make the customers aware of your actions, then the objective of building a relationship will not be achieved.

Please feel free to add any other implementation problems you have encountered in the comment section.