What is the Walker Loyalty Matrix?

Release Date: November 30, 2023 • Episode #4

Companies often struggle with knowing their customer’s needs and why they actually stay customers. Are they happy? Are they looking elsewhere for their needs? Why are they not happy? Segmenting these customers into a loyalty scale is common, but not necessarily actionable. On this episode of The CX Leader Quick Tips Minicast, Michelle Buretta, a vice president at Walker, shares how the Walker Loyalty Matrix™ provides businesses with a practical means to leverage the voice of the customer for improved business performance.

Michelle Buretta
Walker
Connect with Michelle

Transcript

The CX Leader Quick Tips Minicast: "What is the Walker Loyalty Matrix?": Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Download the “The CX Leader Quick Tips Minicast: "What is the Walker Loyalty Matrix?" audio file directly.

The CX Leader Quick Tips Minicast: "What is the Walker Loyalty Matrix?": this wav audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Chris:
Hello everyone, I'm Chris Higgins, and welcome to another edition of The CX Leader Quick Tips Minicast, where walker experts take a few moments to give you helpful advice on how to improve your XM programs. Joining me on this episode of the minicast is Michelle Buretta, a vice president in our client services here at Walker and no stranger to the podcast. Michelle, welcome and thanks for being back on the show.

Michelle:
Thank you Chris, I am happy to be here.

Chris:
So, Michelle, what is your quick tip for our listeners?

Michelle:
Well, as the year end quickly approaches, it is really a great time to reflect on the relationships with your current customers. At this point in the year, you've probably done your your relationship survey and collected all kinds of customer data and feedback, and it's really a time to take all of that information and begin to reflect on the strength and the quality of those customer relationships. And there is no better way to do that than with the Walker Loyalty Matrix. And so our Walker Loyalty Matrix is a tool that we've created to really summarize the degree of loyalty that your customers have with your company. It is a great way to segment and identify those customers that are truly loyal and those that might be at risk. The Loyalty Matrix uses a couple of behavioral and attitudinal questions to really segment and understand where those relationships lie, and what you can do about it. So we think about the Matrix, it is you know, it really puts those customers into four quadrants: accessible, truly loyal, high risk and trapped. The Matrix allows you to segment each of those customers and really identify areas where you can take action and rebuild that relationship, strengthen the relationship and grow that share of wallet with those clients.

Chris:
This sounds great, Michelle. And of course, I'm a little biased. I work at Walker and I know all about the Loyalty Matrix, but I think some people are going to want to know once you have it, what can you do with it?

Michelle:
Yeah, that's a great question, Chris, because oftentimes we have this very theoretical viewpoint on metrics, KPIs, and sort of the philosophy of how we segment our customers. But the truth is, is once we get over that analytical hurdle, it is critical to take action and really make sure, particularly those customers that may be in that at risk, the high risk or trapped category, to take action as quickly as possible. When we think about our accessible customers, right, so that category, you know, they might have a good attitude about you, but they're kind of on the fence, right? So they're like, well, we're in a contract, but particularly in a B2B space. Right. Not totally sold. And that's definitely an area where you want to do some care and feeding. Understand, dig a little deeper to what's driving their decision making to do business with you. And if there's competitive pressures. We think about our truly loyal though, so in contrast, our truly loyal customers, those that really want that partnership. Right. So those are your Gold star customers that you're really having that not just a vendor relationship, but, you know, really a trusted partnership. And you want to make sure that you're understanding as much as you can about those customers. And then we have our trapped customers. So oftentimes in B2B, we're in a contract situation where maybe the customer doesn't have agency to choose who their vendor partner is in some in some cases. And so they feel trapped in the relationship because they don't have that option of choice. So in that situation, identifying those customers is important because you could move that to a truly loyal relationship.

Michelle:
And conversely, this could end up being a high risk customer come contract renewal time in RFPs. So I think it's it's really important for that group to identify and fix concerns and making sure that you're doing everything you can to build that relationship organically, to really bring them into that truly loyal quadrant. Finally, we have our high risk. So we want to make sure that we don't all of a sudden say, oh, the sky is falling with our high risk. There are some reasons why our customers don't stay right in, particularly at the end of this year. Looks very different than the end of last year, right? It's a bit more scarcity than abundance. And so sometimes we feel the churn not because we did anything wrong or didn't do enough, but just situational and economic changes. That said, in your high risk category, it's crucial to quickly identify and counter any of those factors that you can control and make sure that you address with those key stakeholders quickly, so that you can potentially turn that relationship around, or at the very least, identify the areas in which you could do better with customers going forward. Not all customers are salvageable, and sometimes relationships end. But what can we control in terms of the level of service, kindness, communication, all of those things, and sometimes death by a thousand cuts when we see that customer churn. So understanding what we're doing well and what we can improve upon is really key in each one of those quadrants and categories specifically, but holistically. What are the key tenants of loyalty and why your customers are raving fans.

Chris:
So a lot of companies and a lot of practices have something similar. You know, they'll have like they'll segment their customers in similar ways. This sounds like the difference here is the actionability of what the Walker Loyalty Matrix offers.

Michelle:
You're absolutely right, Chris. And and the beauty of the loyalty matrix again is it's very specific to B2B. And so we're not trying to create a system across all, you know, B2B and B2C. This is very specified. And so taking that into consideration, the second piece is the actionability. Like I had mentioned. Right. We are able to point out specific actions by quadrant. And then working as you work with advisors at Walker, you can then understand very specific ways to mitigate risk and build those relationships and very practical and operational ways. The final piece is that ability of combining X and O data. And so when we think about operational data, there's a financial linkage that is tied to potential revenue gained and lost depending upon where your customers sit in these quadrants, what their spend is. So you can see the potential in all four categories. And particularly when we think about most organizations already segment their top customers. They're big spenders. They're global clients. Et cetera. They already know who the big fish are. And so if those big fish are falling into quadrants that are not truly loyal, then it's time to take action. And as a CX practitioner, those numbers really mean something. It's not just that your big company is unhappy, it's that your big fish is at risk. And these are the dollars attached, which I think is for us as CX leaders, is so critical in building business cases and getting the C-suite to really pay attention to those metrics.

Chris:
All right. So I'm a B2B CX pro at a company and you've sold me. How do I get the Walker Loyalty Matrix?

Michelle:
Well, that's a great next step right. So as we talked today, there is so much more to learn about the Loyalty Matrix. And a group of amazingly talented folks here at Walker can help you build out a great Loyalty Matrix for your customers, but also really give you some ways, some practical ways on how to use it and really see that ROI. How you can get in touch with us is simply by emailing us at solutions@walkerinfo.com. We would love to talk more with you about your interest in the Loyalty Matrix, and particularly if you've used it in the past we'd love to hear your stories and how it's helped build business cases and really helped enhance your CX program as a whole.

Chris:
That sounds great, Michelle. And of course, we'll have information on our website for the show notes page of this mini cast on how you can get a hold of someone at Walker to learn more about the Loyalty Matrix. Michelle, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us about the Walker Loyalty Matrix.

Michelle:
It's been a pleasure, Chris. Thank you so much.

Chris:
If you want to listen to more great advice, go to cxleaderpodcast.com and be sure to follow the show. And if you have a question or would like to hear more on a particular topic, send us an email at podcast@walkerinfo.com. Thanks for listening.