“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning” –Bill Gates-

          Your advertisers have never been faced with so much choice……cable, conventional TV, lifestyle magazines, new radio stations, direct mail, mass mail, daily newspaper, community newspaper, billboards, transit, transit shelters, internet, and more.

          Each and every one of your customers can use other media to increase their sales, and can stay in business without you. That is why you must manage customer perceptions and expectations of your stations.

          And you can not manage perceptions and expectations if you are not measuring your clients’ perceptions and expectations.

          Even once-arrogant large auto manufacturers like Ford and GM, now measure and reward dealers for improving customer satisfaction levels. You should too.

          Many stations experience 30% account attrition levels. If those stations could retain half of those accounts through improved customer satisfaction, they would experience a 15% sales increase without any hard-fought new-business.

          Most of us have seen the surveys that conclude it can cost six to twenty times as much to find a new customer as it does to keep an existing customer satisfied.

          Measuring and monitoring what your customers expect from your stations can be the first step in reducing account attrition. Most of us spend a fortune on ratings to measure how audiences feel about us, and yet we ignore our paying customers’ perceptions.

          I recommend that all new accounts receive a Customer Satisfaction survey within 30 days of their first order, and that all regular clients be surveyed at least once per year.

          Sometimes, just asking customer opinions can improve your customers’ impressions of your company.

          Your top fifty accounts, one per week, should be surveyed in person by management. This not only helps to make your key accounts feel important, it keeps management in touch with the market and with customer perceptions.

           I think it was business guru Tom Peters who said, “If it can’t be measured, it can’t be managed”. How are you managing so far?