Nothing predicts organic growth like customer engagement. Aggressive advertising campaigns, mega sales promotions, promises of low prices, and reward programs may get customers through the door -- but they don't create the types of emotional connections that drive long-term profits and loyalty. If your customers aren't "true believers," your company risks surviving based on a price relationship alone -- and will never prosper.
Gallup defines customer engagement as the emotional connection between your customers and your company. Though some may believe customers' purchasing decisions are guided primarily by rational thinking, our research has shown otherwise. Customers form strong emotions about your company based on their experiences with your people -- and those emotions strongly influence their buying decisions.
Customers who love your company -- your true believers -- say that they "can't live without it." They shop more often, buy more, tell others about it, and -- most importantly - are less price sensitive. Customers who hate your company spread negative emotions to stop others from doing business with you.
Any customer strategy that does not account for this phenomenon in human nature is flawed. The Gallup Customer Engagement Score (Gallup CES) is a concise survey comprised of three actionable items with the most conclusive links to crucial customer outcomes. The Gallup CES categorizes customers into three distinct groups: fully engaged, indifferent, and actively disengaged.
The three items that produce the Gallup Customer Engagement Score (Gallup CES) are:
- Company always delivers on what they promise.
- I feel proud to be a Company customer.
- Company is the perfect company for people like me.
According to our research, customers who are fully engaged represent a 23% premium in terms of share of wallet, profitability, revenue, and relationship growth over the average customer. And when we look at engagement in specific industries, we find even more evidence of its impact. For example:
- Retail banking customers who are fully engaged bring 37% more annual revenue to their primary bank than actively disengaged customers.
- Consumer electronics shoppers who are fully engaged spend 29% more per shopping trip than actively disengaged customers.
- Hotel guests who are fully engaged spend 46% more per year than actively disengaged guests.
- Companies that successfully engage their B2B customers realize 63% lower customer attrition, 55% higher share of wallet, and 50% higher productivity.
And here's something you have to know: Simply "satisfying" customers doesn't have the same effect as engaging them. Traditional customer satisfaction programs don't work. As the world's leading authority on customer behavioral economics, Gallup can provide your company with strategies to explode your number of true believers and drive organic growth.
Gallup Knowledge
Copyright © 1994-2000 Gallup, Inc. All rights reserved. Gallup® and Gallup CES™ are trademarks of Gallup, Inc. The Gallup CES items are Gallup proprietary information and are protected by law. You may not administer a survey with the CES items or reproduce them without written consent from Gallup.