Creating and Maintaining Loyal Customers

Fashion Furniture is committed to providing our customers with the best experience in the industry. That starts by asking a simple question to all our customers: How likely are you to recommend Fashion to a friend when they need to rent a complete home package?

Today we’re thrilled to share this article from our very own CEO as he explains how Fashion is implementing a company-wide ideology to go above and beyond to ensure your voices are heard, and how we are working to build brandy loyalty. 

Everyone knows it’s important to have repeat customers, but for many companies it seems that it is becoming more and more difficult every year. As e-commerce continues to grow companies often find themselves losing customers to lower cost providers. Companies lose market share, then cut costs to try to enable them to reprice their product and win customers back. This cycle can repeat over and over, until the company we are talking about decides they need to figure out a new product line to sell or, worse, go out of business.

The cycle isn’t just about companies that rely on e-commerce – all companies that have customers would love to have an army of customers that won’t be swayed by a lower priced competitor. These are the kind of customers that bring more customers through their word of mouth recommendations. They are also the kind of customers that post raving reviews on Yelp and other public sites which help bring in even more potential customers. The word that best describes these customers is LOYAL. How do you build a loyal customer base and increase customer retention? That is the question many companies and executives ask themselves every day.

Ten or so years ago I was asked to be on a committee to vet a new concept and help figure out how to test it. The concept was the Net Promoter System (NPS) and our company, Archstone, decided to overhaul our customer survey system, bringing NPS into our company, as well as into our industry. NPS is based on one very important question that is asked of customers –“On a scale of 0 to 10, with 10 being the highest grade, would you refer our company to your relatives or friends?” The theory is that if someone is a loyal customer they will rate their answer very high. Conversely, if they are an unhappy customer they will rate you very low. The Net Promoter Score is the ratio between the customers that love you (promoters) vs. the customers that are not fans (detractors). By focusing on that ratio, a company has the ability to get their entire workforce to understand and be focused on a single metric, and on what they can do to affect that ratio. I know it brought a fantastic focus on the customer to Archstone.

Fast forward to today: NPS is becoming a tool that many companies in commercial real estate are utilizing. Avalon Bay and The Irvine Company are just two examples of prominent companies using NPS. These companies are focused on their customers, listening to them, reaching out when there is not enough information to determine why someone is unhappy, and in general just communicating more, due to NPS. They are building loyal customers, and those customers are bringing their friends, family, and acquaintances with them to rent apartments with the company they feel loyal to.

Other industries have also embraced NPS. Airlines, hotels, retail, credit cards and tech companies are just some examples of industries that have discovered the importance of setting up their customer feedback loops. Our company, Fashion Furniture Rental, as well as our subsidiary, Parker Rose Design, have recently embraced NPS as our survey of choice and the way we are going to ensure we always have the customer in our thoughts. I believe we are the first rental furniture company to do so, and it’s my belief that this will take our company to new heights. We have already discovered processes and policies that needed to be changed, and have done so. The positive response from our customers has been overwhelming. We are already building our base of loyal customers!