January 25, 2005

LOYALTY. IS. EARNED.

                     

🚀 Audacious Move™ of the Week

LOYALTY. IS. EARNED.

Customer loyalty isn’t created by points, programs or clever promotions. It’s earned by how an organization treats the customers it already has—every damn day.

Bold Decisions Create Extraordinary Businesses.

I hope it helps you create yours.

Stop trying to buy customer loyalty. EARN it.

Most organizations are obsessed with getting new customers.

More leads. More prospects. More acquisition campaigns.

Meanwhile, the people who already chose them are treated like yesterday’s news.

That’s nuts.

Your existing customers have already done the difficult thing.

They chose you.

Now give them compelling reasons to keep choosing you.

Loyalty isn’t something you own.

It’s something you earn every damn day.

⚡ 7 Ways to Make Loyalty Happen

Here’s how I did it.

🎯 #1 — Nail the basics.

Before you try to DAZZLE people, make damn sure your basic product or service works.

Every time.

Customers don’t care about your fancy loyalty program if your core service is unreliable.

Deliver what you promised.

Reliability isn’t sexy. But without it, everything else is lipstick.

🤩 #2 — Create Dazzling Moments™.

Good service isn’t enough.

Create experiences people don’t expect.

Something that makes them think:

“WOW! I didn’t expect THAT.”

That’s a Dazzling Moment™.

It doesn’t have to be expensive.

It has to be personal, relevant and unexpected.

That’s what people remember—and talk about.

🛟 #3 — Turn OOPS! into loyalty.

Things will go wrong.

Guaranteed.

What matters is what you do after you screw up.

That’s OOPS! Service Recovery.

Own it.

Apologize.

Fix it FAST.

Then do something unexpected to recover the customer’s trust.

Don’t defend the mistake.

Recover the relationship.

❤️ #4 — Hire Human Being Lovers.

Stop hiring people simply because they have the right résumé.

Hire people who love serving other human beings.

You can teach systems, processes and product knowledge.

It’s a hell of a lot harder to teach someone to care.

I hired for goosebumps.

People who got a charge out of helping someone.

Customers can FEEL the difference.

👍 #5 — Build a Say YES!™ culture.

Most organizations have accumulated rules designed to protect themselves.

And customers pay the price.

Build an Organizational Instinct™ to solve customer problems rather than defend organizational policies.

Give your people permission to Say YES!™.

Start Killing Dumb Rules™ that prevent them from doing it.

Customers shouldn’t have to fight your organization to do business with you.

👟 #6 — Lead by Serving Around™.

Get out of the office.

Talk to the people actually serving customers.

Ask them:

“How can I help?”

Then remove the barriers preventing them from executing your Strategic Game Plan™.

Serve the people who serve the customer.

That’s leadership.

🎁 #7 — Reward loyalty BEFORE acquisition.

This one drives me crazy.

A company advertises a spectacular deal.

An existing customer wants it.

“Sorry. New customers only.”

Really?

You’ll give a stranger a better deal than someone who has been paying you for years?

Backwards.

Give your loyal customers first shot at your best deals.

Make them feel special.

Because they ARE.

💥 The takeaway.

Customer loyalty isn’t a marketing program.

It’s the consequence of how you behave.

Do the basics brilliantly. Surprise people. Recover when you screw up. Hire people who care. Say YES!™. Serve your people. Reward loyalty.

Give customers reasons to WANT to stay.

Stop chasing loyalty.

Start behaving in ways that deserve it.

🚀 Want more Audacious Moves™?

🎙️ Listen to Audacious Moves to a BILLION™ for practical, contrarian ideas for building an extraordinary business.

✍🏻 Explore more articles, ideas and proven tools at BE DiFFERENT or be dead.

Extraordinary businesses aren’t built by ordinary decisions.

They’re built one Audacious Move™ at a time.

Now go make yours.

Cheers,
Roy

• Posted 1.25.05 at 06:00 am by Roy Osing
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