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What's Love Got To
Do With It?
By JoAnna Brandi
Customer Loyalty, we all want it. Don't we?
Some people say its dead - they say that customers are fickle, that they
don't want loyalty, that they just want the lowest price and the fastest
way to get it. Some say that customers have changed and that the pursuit
of loyalty is foolish, since it's the customers that are not interested
it in it. I don't agree. Loyalty is not DEAD, it's just sleeping.
I agree that customers have changed (because our needs have
changed.) We're more demanding than ever before, we have more
choices than ever before, we're more educated than most of the companies
we do business with (about their products and their competitive
position.) And here's the truth: we don't give our loyalty to
companies that don't give their loyalty to us.
Companies have in the last ten years made it more difficult, more
confusing, and more frustrating to deal with them than ever before. They
give all the "special offers" to the new customers; they've
removed human beings from answering phones and answering questions. They
make us pump our own gas, check on our packages, book our own airline
tickets and figure out when they've made mistakes on our accounts.
They cut their training budgets and have trimmed their service staffs to
the bone. They pay big bonuses at the top, but at the bottom of the
corporate pyramid, where the customers lie (if they make the pyramid at
all) they charge us fees for the privilege of using their services!
Is it no wonder we've become rather selective to whom we pledge our
loyalty?
No, customer loyalty is not dead, but it is ailing. It is given only to
those companies that earn it and keep earning it by delivering value and
positive experiences on a consistent basis.
Companies that want to Thrive.. not just survive in this century better
figure out fast that keeping more of their customers, and keeping them
happy is a critical economic necessity.
Good and loyal customers are critical to profitability. Estimates are
that it costs 6 -30 times more to get new customers than it does to
maintain the ones you have. If you keep losing customers and have to
keep replacing them, it makes sense that you are spending money on sales
and marketing that could be going elsewhere.
It's your LOYAL customers that give you referrals and sing your praises
in your advertising and testimonials. Referral business is like
"free" new customers. So the money you would have paid to GET
the new customer drops back down to your bottom line.
I find it is sadly true that most companies don't have a strategic plan
for keeping customers, keeping them happy OR keeping them coming back
time and time again with their money and their friends. Even though
Customer Loyalty was determined to be a #1 concern of CEO's (according
to the Conference Board) how many companies do more than pay lip service
to the importance of customer service and loyalty in their organization?
Your guess is as good as mine. Based on the service I receive as a
customer, well, I can understand why more customers aren't loyal, can
you?
What can YOU do to change that? What can you do to turn the tide on this
disturbing trend and develop long lasting, loyal customer relationships?
And what's LOVE got to do with it?
Everything. Business is based on relationships and relationships are
based on qualities such as trust, respect, appreciation, understanding,
generosity, clear open and honest communication and heavy doses of
kindness, compassion and affection. Sometimes known as LOVE.
Studies show that the main reason customers will leave a company they
are doing business with is that they perceive the company does not care
about them or their needs. And conversely, studies show that when asked
why they stay loyal to a particular company for a long time, customers
respond, "Because they cared about me." This perception and
feeling of caring is the emotional bridge between customer satisfaction
and customer loyalty. And, it's often the bridge between lackluster
profits and thriving good health on the bottom line.
It about emotion. Loyalty is an emotional attachment to a company based
on the customer's subjective perception that the company is delivering
the value they desire or need, when and how they need it. It's based on
their needs, and it's based on their experience of doing business with
us. As a customer myself, I know that the companies I chose to
give my loyalty to are those that make me feel good about the whole
experience of doing business with them.
When we FEEL good about doing business with a company we form emotional
ties, not just financial ties with them. Let's face it, customers are
emotionally attached to their money - if we want them to give some of it
to us - we need to get them emotionally attached to US.
Emotions have been "undiscussable" in business for a long
time. "Feelings" is the "F" word of the business
world. How many times have we heard that we are to keep our
feelings out of it, keep our emotions away from our business decisions,
and park our personal problems at the door? Sound familiar? Well I've
learned that you cannot expect your staff to bring their passion to work
and but not their feelings. It just doesn't work that way. It's
time we developed an emotional literacy in business.
Employees and Customers are people. People have feelings. And as people,
their decisions are effected by their feelings, whether they can
identify the feelings or not. Any salesperson can tell you that while
people make decisions that look logical, they are more often than not,
based on emotion.
As people we are perceptive, conscious, sensitive, alive and feeling
beings! It's an essential part of our nature. When we recognize
that in business, we'll work harder at building the emotional equity
with a customer that determines whether or not they become a loyal
customer or a lost customer.
It is the perception, the feeling of being cared about that keeps the
customers coming back. And it's what we do to build and support and
create that feeling that creates a positive experience for the customer.
Every customer has two sets of needs. The business needs are logical,
rational, and practical. The personal needs are emotional, illogical and
sometimes even irrational, but carry a lot of weight. The fulfillment of
the customer's business needs is usually what gets them in the door in
the first place - you are selling what they need. But it's the
fulfillment of the customer's personal needs that will keep them coming
back. Once the business needs are met, they often take a back seat to
the customer's experiential needs.
It's the quality of the emotional experience you have with a company
that will determine whether or not you want to keep recreating that
experience. We come back to companies that have what we want and create
a positive experience for us. We leave companies that don't have what we
want or create a negative experience for us. Experience is emotional.
When a customer walks away from the whole experience (your greeting,
interacting with your website, the dealing with people in your office..)
of doing business with you with positive emotions like happiness, joy,
delight, caring, security, welcome and appreciation - they
will most likely want to come back (if you recreate the positive
emotions consistently.)
If they walk away from the experience with negative emotions like
frustration, anger, disgust, fear, incompetence, indifference, if they
leave with a lack of confidence, if they leave feeling stupid -- and if
that's what's delivered consistently - they usually don't stay around
unless they haven't YET found some other place to go.
It's the quality of the emotional experiences that customers have with
you that will determine whether or not they will continue to do business
with you over time
What's LOVE got to do with it? Maybe more than we thought!
Tim Sanders, Chief Solutions Officer, Yahoo writing in "Love is the
Killer App," says "What do I mean by "love"? The
best general definition that I've read comes from philosopher Milton
Mayeroff's brilliant book, On Caring. Love, he writes, 'is the selfless
promotion of the growth of the other.' When you help others grow to
become the best people that they can be, you are being loving, and as a
result, you grow."
What a great description for what we want to happen in our business
relationships! I want to do business with a company that believes in the
selfless promotion of the growth of ME and my business! I want to give
my money to companies that want to help me be the best ME I can be -
whether I'm buying cosmetics or computers or telephone service or food.
I want to do business with someone who has my best interests in mind.
In lieu of that - I'll do my own research, haul my own lumber and pump
my own gas - but if I'm doing the service work - then I want the lowest
price possible! I'm not loyal to companies that don't care enough about
me to make my experience with them easy, stress and hassle free, and
pleasant. How about you?
What's love got to do with it? A whole lot more than we ever thought.
Let's start doing a better job of creating experiences that the customer
perceives as positive, caring, and yes, maybe even loving.
JoAnna Brandi is the Publisher of JoAnna Brandi's Customer Care Coach
TM, a weekly e-mail training and coaching program designed to help teach
the "The Art and Science of Exquisite Customer Care." She is
the Author of "Building Customer Loyalty - 21 Essential Elements in
ACTION" and "Winning at Customer Retention, 101 Ways to Keep 'em
Happy, Keep 'em Loyal and Keep 'em Coming Back." She has been in
the customer retention and loyalty business for 14 years and is a
popular public speaker on the topics. Sign up for her free email tips! www.customercarecoach.com
and www.customerretention.com
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