Creating Customer Loyalty
By Ken Freeman
Customers are never an inconvenience. They are our security blanket. They pay our wages, rent, utilities, inventories, and perhaps even our child’s education! Truly, our customer is the reason we exist in business. Customer loyalty is created one step at a time. Determine customer expectations, develop excellent listening skills, and find out how to communicate with your customers and you’ll begin to create customer loyalty.
As business owners, we often park in our private parking area, enter through our private entrance and when we phone in, we always get a direct line to our assistant or secretary. But what about our customers? If you really want to know what image your customers have of your business, try parking in the customer parking lot, entering through the front door of the business, and meet the first person your customers see when they enter your establishment. This is sometimes a shocking eye-opener to many business owners! Some bosses have been met by dead plants in the entry, an array of tattered and worn, out-dated magazines tossed onto a table, and a disinterested employee who doesn’t feel the need to make eye contact or greet the “intruder”.
The person who greets our customers, is very often the employee with the least amount of experience, the least amount of training, and might even be working for minimum wage. Is this the first impression we want to make on our customers?
Customer loyalty is established when we do something that pleases our customers and encourages them to return and to tell their friends about our business. Word of mouth is, and always has been, the best advertising. So, how do we get started?
My definition of business loyalty is:
L – Loving & Caring
O – Other People first…always, no exceptions
Y – YOU, not me. It’s all about the customer and not about me
A – Attitude – Accepting – Accelerating – Appreciating; give the customer positive expectations
L – Listen to what the customer is saying, asking for or expecting from you
T – Trust created through a lifetime of honesty, integrity, personal character and accountability
Y – Yes! Get to the yes’s while avoiding the no’s. Be positive in your approach to requests.
Here are some little things that will improve Customer Loyalty and are easy for the entire staff to do.
- Wear name badges and identification
- Learn the customers’ names
- Refer customers to competitors if you can’t fill their needs
- Create value – be worth what you are charging
- Say, “Thank you” and, “How may I help you?”
- Lead the way to the product, don’t point the way
- Greet everyone – even if just by a nod of the head or a smile
- Consider a dress code; something that identifies employees
- Ask customers if they found what they needed, then listen and serve
- Have a decision-maker and risk-taker available, always
- Have customer appreciation events, rewards, prizes, drawings and specials
- Keep asking customers what you are doing right and what you could do better
Creating customer loyalty goes far beyond great customer service. It requires goals, an action plan and constant review of policy and practices that ensure customers will be back and will refer others. Customer service is something we all want and expect of businesses we visit, but is it something we are offering our customers as well?
Tomorrow, come on in the front door of your business and see what your customers see! Let’s hope you find an atmosphere that is clean, comfortable and friendly and that you will feel confident referring your friends as well.
