From the course: Building Customer Loyalty
What is customer loyalty?
- What does customer loyalty mean to you? When I ask groups or audiences this question, I get a lot of different answers, but most people say something like, "My customers come back. "My customers choose me over the competitors. "Even though the competitor is cheaper, "they continue to pick me. "They understand we offer more than just a commodity," and a whole bunch of other answers. To me, loyalty is simply a feeling and its our efforts that create the feeling. Our efforts create the result. Without deploying effective loyalty strategies either accidentally or purposefully, you cannot have loyalty. Loyalty is a feeling, the emotional bond that customers have towards you and your business. Loyal customers are often not swayed by pricing and they're not swayed by the odd bump in the road or the mistake in the delivery of your products and services. But if you don't have the right efforts in place, it's almost impossible to create the feeling. I often tell my clients, if you only ever hear your sales and marketing people talking about the next great promotion or ad campaign, they're only doing half their jobs. We want to talk about all the steps required to build loyalty throughout the entire customer life cycle. From sales to product and service delivery to after the sale. If you want loyal customers, it has very little to do with customer service. Now, make no mistake. I'm not suggesting that it doesn't matter. Of course it does. It's the reason why customer-centric companies like Amazon and Apple and Zappos have been able to stand out and thrive. But what really matters are the strategies behind those companies, so let me ask you two very simple questions. Are you expecting your customers to be loyal? And are you doing enough to create the feeling? Remember, loyalty has very little to do with the customer and everything to do with how you're creating it.
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