Chron.com recently published a press release on behalf of PR News Wire and First Call. The article was entitled, “AT&T Earns Top Ranking for Wireless Customer Loyalty in Leading Marketing Research Study,” and painted a picture of the current situation at AT&T; a situation that may seemingly benefit them now and in the future.
It may also assist with prospective customers and current customers alike. It may be true that you can’t fully analyze, determine, understand and measure the beneficial nature of building a customer-centric foundation, but AT&T would like to try and seem to be tackling the approach on the right note.
All this comes in correlation to their recent announcement that they had been ranked a top the list for customer loyalty, among wireless phone companies. The information was proclaimed in the 2010 Brand Keys Customer Loyalty Engagement Index, which is a ranking that should be valued and considered a goal for all organizations, at least as far as I’m concerned. Why wouldn’t you want to be fortunate enough to have your customers feel so optimistically about your company?
The latest research was generated by Brand Keys, an organization that could be classified as a marketing research company. They are also known as an innovative leader in the measurement of customer loyalty, and continually produce studies for products and services, in a wide-array of categories and industries.
Specifically, the wireless survey incorporates questions revolving around network quality, technological leadership and competitive plans. With all these unique elements being considered, AT&T must be striving for perfection in all three categories and as a result, were granted the top prize.
Customer loyalty and a credible reputation
As a result, AT&T is seemingly accelerating down a road focused on customer loyalty and building a credible reputation. The strategy seems to be working, at least according to the recent customer survey; they are creating an atmosphere that yields loyal customers that could, in a sense help recruit more customers based on their own perception of the company.
By enabling an environment for customers based on loyalty, you will develop a group of followers that basically have your back, and this can ultimately lead to your own organizational success.
This also leads me to think that they must be engaging their customers in a different fashion, otherwise how else would they be creating this degree of loyalty? Is it all based merely on their products and services, or are they accomplishing more on the back-end that non-customers don’t know about? Regardless of the reason for customer faithfulness, AT&T customers seem to have a technological advantage on their side, which other providers may not be able to compete with.
Currently, AT&T customers are surrounded by the nations quickest 3G network, have the ability to multi-task while communicating on their phones and even have free broadband access to approximately 20,000 Wi-Fi hot spots nationwide. All this becomes available only with selected devices, although the price of smart phones continues to drop, which has allowed more people to access the world-wide web directly in the palms of their hands. Not to mention, AT&T is arguably a leader in the innovative introduction of smart phones; this works well with a broad range of voice, data and texting plans, equipped with unlimited nationwide plans that are as competitive as any other company at the moment.
Customer-centricity: what AT&T can learn us
With the news of AT&T’s devotion towards customer loyalty and enabling a quality customer experience, it naturally leads an individual to consider the avenue that AT&T explored to gain the loyalty they established.
Especially amidst the collective assortment of cell phone companies that are operating successfully. All this is still somewhat surprising considering we live in a technologically driven society, which cannot seem to survive without instantaneous accessibility to their cell phones and other gadgets. Nonetheless, AT&T should be applauded for their focus on customer-centricity, and should inspire more organizations to do the same.
With this in mind, AT&T is engaging their customers and maintaining a degree of loyalty.
What are you doing inside your organization to enable the same success and mentality? Maybe we should all take note of AT&T and incorporate the same approach.
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Ryan Schoenefeld is a recent graduate from St. Cloud State University, in which he focused on public relations, graphic design, digital marketing and communication. Since graduation, he launched and analyzed a social media marketing campaign for M Squared Group, a results-driven marketing company in Minneapolis. He is currently a Web Content Specialist at Health Partners and recently commenced The Continuous Disquisition. You can connect with Ryan on Twitter and on LinkedIn .
