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8 Steps to Increasing Customer Value, Retention & Per-Head Spend

Updated: Sep 20, 2021

In this article, our founder Rob Arnold shares 8 key steps that have proved to be successful common threads across the RCA client landscape since 2010.


Since 2010, RCA has, in conjunction with our training programmes, mystery shopped over 1200 retail, hospitality, automotive & healthcare brands. The recommendations which follow are a synthesis of the common threads inherent in the most successful brands we have audited and partnered with.




1. Find the balance between the Transactional & Transformational Mindset

  • One of the most common symptoms within a company not delivering on its potential is an imbalance between a transactional versus transformational mindset inherent across the team.

  • What's the difference? A transactional mindset is the state we find ourselves in to tick the necessary boxes in order to get through the day. The transactional mindset does not move the needle in terms of a customer's perception or degree of value felt.

  • When a customer complains about a lack of attention, it is most often the function of staff stagnating in the transactional mindset.

  • While there are many functions within an organisation where the transactional mindset is important to ensure rigorous execution, the coalface of the customer experience is not one of them.

  • How do you find the optimal balance? People operate in a transformative mindset when their purpose and reason for being is clear. When we have a clear purpose and intent behind a task, we apply ourselves, we are conscious of what is happening around us. We are acutely lucid of the environment. The bi-pr