In his book, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless: Customer Loyalty is Priceless, Jeffrey Gitomer said, “Satisfaction is no longer the acceptable measurement of customer service success”. This is the reality of business today: No matter how satisfied you think your customers are, you need to make an emotional connection and develop a long-term relationship, or that satisfaction is ultimately worthless. You customer loyalty program needs to be part of your overall strategic plan.
Here’s why…
Great customer service is all about sending customers away happy and bringing them back for more. They need to be happy enough to pass along positive feedback about your business to others who may then try your product or service and hopefully become repeat customers themselves.
Customers will come back, with their family and friends, if:
Here are some statistics that provide proof that emotional connections with customers matter:
Pretty powerful stuff!
Ask yourself this question: On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely is it that your customers will recommend you to someone else?
If your answer is below seven, or you don’t know the answer, it is time to think about developing a customer loyalty strategy as part of your strategic plan and start creating the emotion in the experience with your business.
Howard Shore is a strategic planning consultant and founder of Activate Group Inc, based in Miami, Florida. His firm works with companies to deliver transformational management and business coaching to executive leadership. To learn more about strategic planning through AGI, please contact Howard at [phone link=”true”] or email him.