There have been many studies done and many books written on what makes a company great. Some of the qualities are great employees, great products, gives great service and is easy to do business with. These qualities have two things in common. They all are attractive qualities to both prospective employees and customers and create loyalty. Without great customer service companies would not be able to attract and create customers, but even more importantly companies without loyalty will have no longevity. We should view longevity in business, more like a marathon run than a quick sprint. Our processes and policies need to reflect that we are in it for the long run.
One possible reason that loyalty is not talked about or stressed in businesses is that it is more difficult to define and achieve than customer service. Our own experience as consumer’s day in and day out tell us that we know which companies provide better customer service but can we define why we are loyal to them? Is it simply that they provide us with great service or is there something much deeper going on that makes us loyal and repeat customers? Our own companies need to be loyal to our employees, product quality and of course our customers. Listed below are a few ideas from bestselling author and speaker Jeffrey Gitomer in how to incorporate loyalty into your business:
1. List all reasons that customers call you for service.
2. List all barriers that you place in front of a customer, connecting with you.
3. Once you have all the opportunities and all the barriers listed , have a weekend retreat with senior management and front-line people to determine best practices, generate new ideas for service, and making it easier to do business with your company
4. Put the ideas and the best practices into action.
5. Rather than announce all of these changes in the form of a bragging advertisement, or internal hoopla, let your customers have an opportunity to react and response to your new and better way of doing business.
6. All members of senior management must support this process both verbally and visually.
Source: Gitomer, Jeffrey. “Sales Caffeine”. (2009)
The key to differentiating our company, products and ourselves is to strive to provide loyalty based service, not simply customer service.