Loyalty: What turns customers into fans?

In the past, I’ve heard various industry luminaires say that loyalty is dead. My premise is that it never really existed. At least, not in the way we’d like it to.

You might argue that pre-internet, when consumers had less choice, some degree of loyalty existed. But it wasn’t driven by an emotional connection with a brand.

And with the proliferation of choice available to consumers and businesses alike, we have to work harder than ever to generate any meaningful loyalty.

To add to this, I don’t believe that loyalty can be achieved purely by giving points or some other form of reward when a customer buys from you. This is not enough. Sure, it will encourage some customers to buy from you again if the points or rewards are meaningful. But it won’t build true customer lifetime value.?

Lifetime value is a bit like having a best friend. If you nurture the relationship and you both make an effort, then it will thrive. But if it’s too one-sided, it will never stand the test of time, and the relationship will peter out.

Loyalty is earned by the brand when it engages effectively across all channels and touchpoints and when it communicates on a personalised level with the customer offering products, services and incentives tailored to their needs. When it recognises who they are and what they like and don’t like. When consistent levels of customer service are delivered no matter how and when the customer engages with the brand. When the business demonstrates a set of values and behaviours that customers can identify with and that are reflective of their own values. When the business proves that it takes its impact upon the environment seriously and doesn’t just pay lip service to it by doing the minimum. When it demonstrates that it genuinely cares about being a truly diverse and inclusive business, and this manifests itself in the employee profile of the business as well as in how the business engages with different and diverse customer groups.

I am a firm believer that any business can begin the process of turning a customer into a fan. And this is really where loyalty is borne out of, where the customer moves from having a purely transactional led relationship with a business to having some form of emotional connection. No matter how small that is.

Do I believe that every customer will, or can, become a fan? No, I do not. But whether you’re selling to consumers or other businesses, when you behave differently towards customers and genuinely put them at the heart of all you do, they, in turn, are the recipients of a better experience. They begin to feel differently about your brand.

None of this is rocket science. Think about it from your own perspective. If you’ve ever had to call the customer service function of a business you’ve engaged with, all too often, that experience was poor because they weren’t empowered to resolve your issue, and so you put the phone down feeling unloved. The reverse of this is when you had the opposite experience where they couldn’t do enough for you.?

At this point, and while you might not realise it, you’re already becoming an advocate for the brand. When you’ve been pleasantly surprised or even delighted when a customer service team has helped to resolve everything for you, you often tell friends, family and work colleagues, maybe even the Twittersphere. Again, the reverse is true when you’ve had a bad experience.

The above is driven by the culture of the business. And that comes from the top.

You can tell a lot about the CEO running a company by the experience you have across different touch points of their business. It tells you where their focus is. Is it on short-term profitability, or are they also playing the long game in recognition of the opportunity to turn a customer into a fan?

Hear direct from consumers about what drives their loyalty and turns them into fans in my latest Consumer Focus Podcast episode. You can listen here.