Attracting Loyalty from the New Customer
By Chip R. Bell and John R. Patterson
The landscape of customer loyalty has been re-contoured! Today’s customers are not like they use to be twenty-five years ago. First, customers get terrific service in pockets of their life and use those experiences to judge everyone else. When the UPS or FedEx delivery person walks with a sense of urgency, we expect the mail carrier to do likewise. Customers also have way more choices than ever before. A quick trip to the grocery store for a simple loaf of bread and you are confronted with 16 brands and 23 varieties packaged 12 different ways. Two decades ago sliced bread came one way—white—produced by either Wonder or Sunbeam!
Today’s customers are much smarter buyers than their parents were. Considering Sleepwell Hotel for your next vacation trip? You can instantly get web-based information complete with evaluations from forty eleven previous guests. Everyone is everyone’s Consumers Report. Watchdog websites can give you the lowdown on why Joe’s Pretty Good car repair is better than Otto’s Auto. It means companies must monitor all the details (now very transparent to customers) and get early warning on emerging glitches.
Figuring out how to attract and retain loyal customers today is no simple task. Not only are customers different, the same customer is different at different times. The business traveler may enjoy the convenience and comfort of Motel 4 on a weekday but find the same property ill-suited for a weekend getaway with a spouse. However, there are five key loyalty drivers we find fit most customers most of the time about most services.
Include Me
Customers’ loyalty soars when they discover they can be active participants in the service experience. Harley-Davidson created the Harley Owners Group (HOG) as a forum to bring Harley loyalists together for education and recreation. Membership comes with the purchase of a Harley. Frequently, members of executive management join in the fun and fellowship as HOG members reunite around a barbeque or motorcade on a Sunday afternoon.
Dealers for BMW’s Mini brand automobile mail to buyers a “birth certificate” once the customer has paid a deposit. The customer is then provided a link to go on line and follow their car’s actual production. Build-A-Bear Workshop with their interactive build-a-stuff toy experience has grown to over 200 stores around the world in less than ten years. If customers know they have an opportunity to be included, the impact is almost as powerful as if they actually put “skin in the game.”
Protect Me
A value proposition is the complete package of offerings a seller proposes to a customer in exchange for the customer’s funds. It includes the product (or outcome for non-object selling companies), the price, and the process (or experience) involved in getting the product or outcome. There are certain qualities or features all buyers assume will typify that value proposition--the products they buy will be as promised, the price fair, and the process relatively comfortable.
These “givens” are a lot like the air we breathe—taken for granted unless removed. But, adding air does not make us happy campers. If the commercial plane we board lands in the right city, we do not cheer; but, if it lands in the wrong city, we’re upset. We assume banks will be safe, hotels comfortable, and hospitals clean. These “taken for granted” attributes are service air. The gourmet meal recollection will be totally overwritten by the nightmare of food poisoning because the restaurant failed to pay attention to routine health standards. Service air may be boring stuff, but it is called “air” for a reason! And, customers are loyal to organizations that ride herd on making sure the basics are always done perfectly.
Understand Me
We often think of service as the process of meeting a customer’s need. But, it goes much deeper than that. All needs are derived from a problem to be solved. Great service providers are great listeners. They know that unearthing the essence of the problem will point to a solution that goes beyond the superficial transaction. It takes building the kind of rapport with customers that engenders trust. It entails standing in the customers shoes to get a fine bead on their hopes and aspirations.
Understanding the customer takes more than simply sending out a survey or running an occasional focus group. It means viewing every person who comes in contact with the customer as a vital listening post—a scout able to gather valuable intelligence about the customer’s every changing requirements and provide early warning about their issues and concerns. It involves installing a wide range of tools and techniques for customer intelligence gathering. Smart organizations gather and mine the intelligence gained from front line contacts.
Surprise Me
Today’s customers want sparkly and glitter; a cherry on top of everything. They want all their senses stimulated, not just those linked to the buyer-seller exchange. Features have become far more titillating than function; extras more valued than the core offering. It means that attracting customer loyalty today requires thinking of service as an attraction. Examine how Cabelas and Bass Pro Shops decorate the service experience. If your enterprise was “choreographed” by Walt DisneyWorld, a Lexus dealership, MTV or Starbucks, how would it change?
Think of the service experience like a box of Cracker Jacks. What can be your “free prize inside?” The power of surprise lies in its capacity to enchant, not just entertain; to be value-unique, not just value-added. Service innovation works best when it is simple and unexpected. Hotel Monaco puts a live gold fish in your hotel room; Sewell Infiniti dealership programs in your radio stations from your trade-in and lets you discover it; servers at Macaroni Grill introduce themselves by writing their name with a crayon upside down (right side up to the customer) on the butcher paper table cloth.
Inspire Me
Customers are tired of plain vanilla service. It attracts their loyalty if it reflect a deeper purpose or destiny, befitting of the organizations values not just its strategy. Service with character means a sense of innocence, naturalness, purity—a solid grounding. We like being charmed by what we do not understand; we do not enjoy being hoodwinked by what we should have understood. Such service need not be completely obvious to the customer in its design, but it must never feel devious to the customer in its execution.
What makes service inspirational? It moves us when it comes from someone obviously passionate about their work. We are stirred by professionalism and pride. It takes us to a higher plane when it reflects an apparent zeal to “do the right thing.” Given the too often cynical and uncaring side of business today, it leaves customers wanting to return when they have had an encounter with goodness and purity.
Loyal customers act as a volunteer sales force, championing you to others at home, work, in social circles – and even around the globe via recommendations on blogs, online bulletin boards and web sites. And because they feel committed to you and see both emotional and business value in the relationship, they will typically pay more for what they get from you…because they are convinced it is worth it. The formula for creating and sustaining such loyalty comes through inclusion, trust, understanding, joy and character. Put these in your customers’ experience and watch their admiration soar right along with your bottom line!
Chip R. Bell and John R. Patterson are customer loyalty consultants. Their newest book is Take Their Breath Away: How Imaginative Service Creates Devoted Customers (NY: Wiley, May, 2009). They can be reached through http://www.taketheirbreathaway.com/.
