As business professionals, we’ve always known that our customers must be satisfied in order for our business to succeed.  We preached customer satisfaction to our team members, pinned posters in the break room as reminders of providing great customer service, and placed catchy customer satisfaction phrases in brochures, websites, and in our mailings.  To read the above title grates on us and doesn’t jive with our business philosophy, but once you’ve read Jeffrey Gitomer’s book, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless, Customer Loyalty is Priceless, you realize that there is more to providing for your customers than mere satisfaction. Gitomer’s stance is that customer satisfaction measures are basically meaningless.  He states that a merely satisfied customer is still likely to shop around for a more convenient offering or a better price the next time he or she needs that same product or service.  However, a loyal customer is more likely to come back to you as well as recommend your business to others within their circles.   Customer Satisfaction is Worthless is a great book to read and keep as a reference.  There is so much great information in it, but for now, here are three good points you can begin applying to your business to really jump start your customer loyalty program in 2015:

Put a Face at the Front

Gitomer stresses the need for more personalized service to our customers.  He says that when we keep automated answering services and receptionists who cannot, or will not make needed decisions, we lose the chance of creating a loyal relationship with that customer.  Striving to keep a human, friendly face and voice at the forefront of all business activities sets the foundation for developing a loyal relationship. Key Point: Remove as much automated systems from the first meeting with a prospect that you possibly can.  Keep the human touch as the first impression.

Place Principle over Policy

The idea that a customer is given the response of “No” should be removed from your team’s vocabulary.  Gitomer says that customers become agitated when they are told that something cannot be done because of a customer policy.  Obviously, somewhere along the way a policy was created for a specific reason, but perhaps it is time to revisit the policy or policies to see if they are still necessary.  If they are still needed, make every attempt to explain with to the customer, with empathy, why the policy is there.  Otherwise, empower employees to make customer loyalty decisions based on common sense and employing the human factor to make the customer happy. Key Point: Empower everyone in your organization to place principle over policy and do what it takes to increase customer loyalty.

Push Grandma into Every Conversation

Customer Satisfaction is Worthless isn’t your ordinary customer service book and that is why I recommend it as keeper.  For example, it would be good to pick up the book and flip to the page that reminds us to address every customer, in your mind, as Grandma at the end of your sentence with every customer interaction.  This little trick makes you think about the next words out of your mouth: “Sorry, we’re closed Grandma.” “What is this in reference to, Grandma?” “It’s our policy, Grandma.” You get the point.  This makes us stop and think how we want to treat our customers and how we can better build a lasting, loyal relationship with them. Key Point: When we treat each and every customer as someone we love, those customers will eventually come to love us. Gitomer states that if we change the term, customer service to customer helping, we would put more care into how we treat customers.  Customer Satisfaction is Worthless contains many more tips and tricks to get us thinking more about how we can better serve the customer and develop a full head of steam toward creating more loyalty as opposed to more satisfaction.  It is my hope that once you implement these three key points and teach them to your team, that you will begin a change that will reap huge long-term benefits due to increased customer loyalty.

Johnny Duncan, President of Duncan Consulting, Inc., is a business writer and consultant partnering with business leaders to provide workforce management solutions including leadership coaching, customer service training, people-to-job matches, copywriting, and conflict resolution.  He can be reached at johnny@duncanconsult.com or by calling 407-739-0718.