Beyond the Vacation: Engage Your Owners

!https://customercount.com/images/26.jpg!

Beyond the Vacation: Engage Your Owners
By: Robert A. Kobek, RRP, President
CustomerCount

Many of you focus on loyalty programs, but remember that loyalty programs are just one component of customer loyalty, not the end game. Customer engagement is another.

Developers and HOAs are keen on engagement in three critical areas: collection of fees, referrals, and on-site activities while on a vacation. But what is stopping you from offering products and services to our owners while they are not on vacation, in collections, or being contacted for referrals?

There are five key cornerstones you should consider in your owner engagement:

1.Relationship. Hear what your owners and members are saying. To do this, you must ask and be willing to listen. Every one of your owners and members has something to say that will help you deliver better service to them as individuals.
2.Benefits. Offer your customers true benefits that can be used throughout the year—so they have fewer reasons to want to walk away from the product.
3.Technology. Collecting data is not enough. Collect actionable data and know what to do with it—critical for customer engagement.
4.Convenience. Use your onsite Wi-Fi to deliver and capture information. Offer convenient methods of making the entire vacation experience a continual one—before, during, and after.
5.Priorities. Put the preferences and needs of the owners as the highest priority and thus a centerpiece of all sales, marketing, and management programs.

And in the end, remember the real goal is to gain their loyalty, not through loyalty programs alone, but also through intelligently deploying engagement initiatives all throughout the year. Not just when owners are on-site