For services and solutions marketers, loyal customers have always meant faster sales cycles, greater lifetime value, easier acceptance of premium pricing, and all-important references and referrals. In short, loyal customers are one of the most important drivers of profitable growth.

But ensuring customer loyalty in today’s market is not easy. Doing it well requires careful attention to the entire customer experience and an intense focus on delivering real value to customers at every stage of the relationship.

This study is intended to help companies benchmark their own customer relationship and loyalty programs against other leading services and solutions firms and learn from industry best practices. Specifically, the study:

1. Outlines the range of customer relationship, satisfaction, and loyalty-oriented programs that top firms are using
2. Highlights the most effective ones
3. Provides an overview of how companies are managing and coordinating their programs
4. Spotlights current investment trends

Building strong and loyal relationships with customers is a key area of focus for today’s services and solutions marketers. This study can help marketers prioritize and improve their relationship-building efforts.

Some key trends highlighted in the report include:

• Reliability, or delivering on promises, is the number one driver of loyalty
• High touch, content rich, executive-level activities are most effective for fostering loyalty
• Product-based companies are much more likely to use digital channels and user groups to nurture relationships with their strategic accounts than services companies
• Respondents based in EMEA and NA are using different tactics to build customer loyalty

Companies included in the study:

Alcatel-Lucent, BearingPoint, CA, Capgemini, CGI Group, CPM, CSC, EMC, Ericsson, Fujitsu Services, HCL Technologies, Hyperion Solutions, Juniper Networks, Microsoft, Nortel, Orange Business Services, PA Consulting, Perot Systems, Polycom, SAP, TeleTech, and Xerox Corporation.

Study Methodology

In February 2007, ITSMA used a Web-based survey to gather data from its members about customer relationship and loyalty programs, program management and coordination, investment trends, and program metrics. ITSMA received 26 responses from 23 unique companies and analyzed the collected data in two ways:

• Company type—primarily services or product and services
• Company region—North America or EMEA

Respondent Demographics

Industry

• Primarily services companies – 50%
• Products and services companies – 50%

Size

• Less than $500 million – 12%
• Greater than $500 million – 88%

Perspective of Respondents

• Corporate marketing – 46%
• Line of services marketing – 31%
• Field marketing – 8%
• Regional marketing – 8%
• Practice area marketing – 4%
• Other – 4%