I find that Customer Loyalty is one of the most overused phrases in business today. To most businesses, it means when a customers gives us money. But that is not what loyalty is.
Let’s talk about what loyalty is. Start by considering what business are you loyal to? You would agree that loyalty goes beyond things like price and efficiency. It’s emotional. No amount of time or money savings are worth it to you to change your loyalty. That’s what loyalty is. Having that kind of bond with your customers is awesome for your business. Building it, however, takes work. Here are two ways that will help you create customer loyalty for life.
- ARE YOU MEMORABLE? LOYALTY IS A FUNCTION OF MEMORY.
You can’t be loyal to something that you haven’t experienced and remember. Therefore, loyalty is about your customers remembering an experience they had with you or a member of your staff and going back. It’s a measurement that they liked it. So how do memories form? Psychology experts tell us that people remember the strongest emotion they feel during an experience and how they felt at its conclusion.
Customers base loyalty on how they remember their previous experiences. So, are you, your team, your business creating and giving your customers a reason to remember you? How can you cause each customer to remember you and feel good about their customer experience. Do you have a plan?
2. IT’S ABOUT EMOTIONAL CONNECTIONS
What emotions are you trying to evoke in your customers, and what emotions do you think would drive loyalty? Most would agree that they are when a business can show and demonstrate the feelings of being valued – not a number, important – you care about me, happy – an enjoyable experience, pleased– satisfaction, trusted – assured, and cared for will all certainly drive loyalty.
So, one tip is to define which emotions you want to evoke in your customer experience that will drive the most emotions for your customers. Then have a plan to instruct, train and implement your staff on how it is to be done. In other words, the expectations of the experience. What behaviors must be done in order to trigger those emotions. Loyalty is emotional. Loyalty is also about relationships. If your business and staff are purely transactional, then I’ve got some bad news for you; it’s not customer loyalty. You have to have an emotional component to it.
In Stephen Covey’s book “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.” he talks about creating an ‘Emotional Bank Account’. An Emotional Bank Account is a place where you deposit good feelings with or to your customers. When you do something for a customer that pleases them and makes them feel valued, you have made a deposit in their emotional bank account. In other words, you have credits. So, when you make a mistake, or if something goes wrong, you take out a withdrawal. If you build up enough of your savings, it doesn’t close out your account when you take out a withdrawal. So, in the customer experience, it is essential to keep making those emotional deposits for that rainy day when possibly something goes wrong in the customer experience.
Also, if you haven’t made any deposits into your customer’s ‘Emotional Bank Account’ recently, you don’t know where that customer is. You might be in danger if your balance is low, that they could defect and go to your competitor.
So, loyalty is more than just satisfying your customers. It’s about creating memories and building emotional relationships with them. These two strategies will absolutely build customer loyalty. Now that would be “Magical’!
John Formica is America’s and Australia’s Customer Experience Coach, team culture experience expert, keynote speaker, and Top 10 Global Thought Leader and Influencer on Customer Loyalty. For information on customer experience programs, leadership training, team culture, business growth, how to find and hire great people and tailored training programs just for you or to book John to speak at your next event, contact 704-965-4090 or visit our website at JohnFormica.com.