Loyalty Cards Systems – Beware, Some Should Be Avo

Loyalty Cards Systems – Beware, Some Should Be Avoided

by: Jeff Walters

Recently, I discussed a loyalty card system with a vendor who was selling quite a number of his systems to restaurants. I was shocked to discover the lack of detailed information that this vendor catered for, and the opportunities the system he provided squandered.

The way their scheme works is that whenever a restaurant customer is presented with a bill, they provide their loyalty card to the waiter, who swipes it at the till. If the customer has accumulated sufficient points from previously purchased meals, he/she is awarded a rebate on the price of the meal.

This is simple price discounting based on repeat purchases. No other marketing activities are carried out either by the loyalty card company, or by the restaurant to proactively influence the number of times the card holder frequents the restaurant they rely solely on the meal discount to attract customers back for more meals.

This is a system that is woefully underexploited.

I asked about the level of detail that was transmitted to the card site and was once again disappointed only the total meal cost was transmitted. The customer profile that was being created was extremely superficial. My view was further confirmed when I asked whether the กsignificant otherก, or other family membersก details were collected. Once again, no.

The key things wrong with this service offering:

* Lack of transaction details. These days, with broadband communication and high volume data disks, there is really no excuse not to collect data at transaction level.

* The simple act of recording the bill at individual meal item level opens up a wealth of information:

Number of main meals if there are children in the family unit (provided during signup), analysis of the bill will provide a clear indication of whether the whole family always eats out, or if on occaision the parents treat themselves to a quiet night on their own possibly anniversaries, or birthdays, or just a regular night away from the kids.

Types of meals red meat, fish, vegetarian which could be used for special promotions

Beer, cheap wine, or expensive wine drinker

If you had the above information at your finger tips, who would you rather focus your marketing efforts on to get to come back to your restaurant the family of six that buys budget meals, and drinks beer and soda, or 3 couples ordering starters, highpriced meals, drinking quality wine, and finishing off with expensive liqueurs?

* Even recording the value of the tip could be useful. A usuallygenerous tipper who awards a low tip (possibly to a new waiter) is giving a clear indication of a bad experience. This information could be used by the restaurant owner to contact the customer within a few days to establish what was wrong with the meal or service, and to invite the customer back with an offer of a generous discount for the next meal.

* Not getting the details of the กsignificant otherก and details of any children prevents marketing to special days. Its pretty pointless merely getting the birthday of the cardholder itกs not that compelling to get an SMS or postcard suggesting that you treat yourself to a special night out. Itกs far more effective to receive a prompt to take your significant other out for that special meal. Childrenกs birthdays are another opportunity to encourage the family to come out to the restaurant for a slapup meal but this is only possible if you take the trouble to collect the data…

Hopefully the above points have provided some ideas as to how basic transaction data can be used effectively by an information analyst or direct marketer.

If you are approached by a vendor to implement a loyalty scheme, or you are thinking about calling for proposals from scheme suppliers, make sure that you investigate the level of data detail that each supplier collects.

If data is recorded at line item level i.e. product ID, quantity, and price then you will have a wealth of sales data that you can start using for a variety of campaigns. If they only provide you with a bill total per meal, then I suggest you look elsewhere for a more effective loyalty card scheme.

© 2005 Intellinova (Pty) Ltd. All Rights Reserved

This article may be reprinted, provided it is published in its entirety, includes the author bio information, and all links remain active.

About The Author

For the past 20 years, Jeff Walters has transformed raw data into profitproducing strategic information in various sectors banking, insurance, gambling, medical, government. He has lead several datatoinformation projects: ABC Costing, analytical CRM, datamart development, and Balanced Scorecard.

Want to convert your raw data into strategic assets? Contact Jeff Walters via : www.IntelliNova.com, or www.SystematicDirectMarketing.com.

[email protected]

This article was posted on August 30

by Jeff Walters

Loyalty Programs May Keep Customers Coming Back –

Loyalty Programs May Keep Customers Coming Back – But First You’ve Got to Earn their Trust

by: Julia Hyde

Remember trading stamps? If you’re over 40, chances are you will. Every time you shopped at a participating grocery store or gas station they gave you stamps to paste into a book. When you’d accumulated enough stamps, you could cash them in for ขfreeข gifts.

These stamps were one of the first loyalty programs. They kept customers loyal to a particular product or merchant because they offered an incentive that encouraged the customer to keep coming back – and spend more money.

While trading stamps are a thing of the past, a wide range of industries still use loyalty programs to establish longterm relationships with their customers. By far the most successful and well known is the frequent flyer program.

On the surface, frequent flyer programs appear to be all about rewarding customers with free flights just because they choose to fly with a particular airline – the more miles you fly the more free miles you get. But, if you asked the airlines who really benefits from these programs, chances are you’d hear a resounding, ขWe do.ข Ask them to explain, and they’ll likely tell you that frequent flyer programs allow them to collect data on individual customers, help them tailor their mailings and special offers to the customer’s specific needs, allow them to promote higher fares, and ultimately increase their sales.

But, as popular as frequent flyer programs have become they only work if the service offered by the airline is good enough to earn the customer’s trust. And that means not only offering a quality flying experience but great customer service and ongoing communication.

For smaller businesses, the benefits of establishing a loyalty program are no different to those enjoyed by the major airlines. And equally, the program’s success depends on first establishing the three most important elements of building that loyalty:

1. Treat your customer’s right, and they’ll be yours for life.

Your customers will not only judge your company by the quality of your product, but also by the level of service you offer. Offer one without the other and you may as well give up now.

Great customer service includes, among other things:

Credibility: Your customers should be able to trust you. No one wants to be on the alert for the small print or hidden charges. They want to know that your company can be trusted and has their best interests at heart.

Flexibility: Never use the words, ขI’m sorry but it’s not our policy.ข Always solve your customer’s problems, even if it means losing the sale. There’s nothing worse for a customer than a company that will not go out of their way to accommodate their needs.

Ontime Deliveries: If you’ve ever ordered a product and been told that the delivery time is 68 weeks, you’ll understand the frustration a customer experiences. Unless the product is out of stock, or is an international delivery, there’s no earthly reason why a product should take 68 weeks to deliver. Similarly, if you promise a certain delivery time, you must abide by it. If you say the product will be shipped within 72 hours, then ship it within 72 hours. If for some reason you find you can’t meet the delivery time, notify the customer and give them the option to cancel their order.

Accurate Billing: We all know mistakes happen. But when you make a billing error or you overcharge, you immediately lose credibility. Add to that the time is takes for a customer to contact you to complain or get you to adjust the bill, and you may well have lost a future sale – and the potential sales of friends and family they’ve complained to.

Hasslefree refunds: We’ve all been there. For some reason we change our minds about a product, or it doesn’t work properly, or it’s not quite what we expected. And we want our money back. Make sure your customers know this is an easy process, up front.

2. Obtain Customer Information

If you want your loyalty program to succeed you must obtain background information from your customers. A program that only requires a name, address, and proofs of purchase isn’t building a longterm knowledgeable relationship with them. And it makes sense that a customer who will take the time to complete an enrollment form is going to be more interested in the product than a casual purchaser. When designing your enrollment form make sure you get information on product usage, purchasing habits, attitudes etc. That way you can tailor your products and services to your customer’s specific needs. And build a database of customers who actually want a longterm relationship with your company.

Keep Communicating

One of the easiest ways to keep customers loyal is to establish on going communication. This can be in the form of emails promoting special offers, letters announcing new products, electronic or print newsletters or even offering educational materials. Another good way of continuing communication is to send them something useful with your company name on it. These simple, inexpensive gifts keep your name in front of a customer, and help to keep them loyal.

Need some help thinking up a loyalty program for your business? Here are some suggestions.

Gift certificates: Offer your customers a gift certificate when they spend a certain amount of money. For example, if they buy $200 worth of goods during a sixmonth period offer them a $25 gift certificate.

Offer point programs: Give your customers points for every $10 or so they spend. When they’ve acquired a certain amount of points they can exchange them for selected goods or services.

Free Shipping: This incentive is a surefire winner for mail order and online companies. Offer free shipping on orders over a certain amount or on future orders.

Communications: Newsletters, pamphlets, direct mailings, postcards, magazines, white papers etc. All these can be used to increase customer loyalty. They don’t need to include a special offer or discount, but it will help.

Properly implemented loyalty programs are a longterm marketing strategy that takes a lot of work and commitment. But, getting new customers takes a lot of work too. So, it makes sense to do everything you can to make sure that every one of those customers keeps coming back time and time again, and recommends you to others.

About The Author

Julia is an independent copywriter and consultant specializing in advertising, search engine optimization and search engine marketing services. To learn more about how Julia can help boost your companyกs profits visit her site at www.juliahyde.com. You may also like to sign up for Marketing Works! Juliaกs monthly ezine. Visit www.juliahyde.com/form.html to sign up or email Julia at mailto:[email protected] for details.

This article was posted on December 04, 2004

by Julia Hyde

Using Technology to Manage Customer Loyalty

Using Technology to Manage Customer Loyalty

by: Richard Cunningham

Don’t let your customer satisfaction research initiative collect dust on a shelf. Integrate technology with research to optimize the use of customer information.

The typical company spends 80% of customer research time and effort gathering information, and only 20% of that time using it. Companies conduct research to gather information, but it is only useful if it can be turned into positive action.

In the audio book, ขSound Advice on Customer Loyalty,ข author Steve Walker suggests that integrating technology with research lets companies act on customer feedback intelligently everyday, translating into more loyal customers, and more profit at the bottom line.

Walker outlines three key applications of technology that help make customer research more effective.

ขFirst, there’s access. Technology centralizes customer satisfaction survey results, allowing enterprise access to information in real time.ข He notes that today’s technology offers a number of ways to view customer data, such as in aggregate form or at the individual customer level.

The second application is actionability. Technology can alert account managers of problems with an individual account so that they can take action to resolve the issue before it’s too late, according to Walker. ขAfter all, what’s the cost of losing a customer, or perhaps more importantly, what’s the cost of replacing one?ข

Third, Walker identifies accountability as a key application of customer loyalty management technology. ขHaving access to real time information can be quite a motivator,ข says Walker, ขEspecially when account managers know their supervisors can easily view action plans, progress reports, and customer follow up activities.ข

Steve Walker offers advice on managing customer loyalty each week in the free audio newsletter from What’s Working in Biz, http://www.whatsworking.biz/full_story.asp?ArtID=92

About The Author

Richard Cunningham is a principal of What’s Working in Biz, http://www.whatsworking.biz, a publisher of business audiobooks and online audio programs on marketing, sales, and small business strategies.

This article was posted on January 10, 2004

by Richard Cunningham

Loyalty Cards – Tips To Consider Before Committing

Loyalty Cards – Tips To Consider Before Committing To One

by: Jeff Walters

Loyalty marketing has been around for as long as retailing – attractive stores, good service, and a quality product line all contribute to building up a loyal customer base.

With the growth of larger stores, a relatively new marketing component – the loyalty card has been added by many retail outlets. This is in an attempt to offset the lack of personal contact in the larger stores, and with that, the lack of knowledge of individual customers.

Despite what any loyalty card vendor tells you – merely introducing a loyalty card scheme will not suddenly buy you customer loyalty – the overall customer experience is the key.

So if a loyalty card doesn’t buy you loyalty, why bother?

The primary purpose of a loyalty card scheme is quite simply to provide information on individual customer behaviour.

Retail stores do not capture customer details when recording a sale on a Point Of Sale device. A loyalty card – with its unique customer ID – provides the vital link between products sold, and customer demographics. It also provides – for the first time – an indication to the retailer who their regular customers are, and what the value of purchases are for each customer. Equally important – when a customer signs up for the loyalty card, they provide their contact details, and ideally, details of the members of their family.

Consider These Points Before Rushing Into A Loyalty Scheme

* A badly implemented loyalty scheme is merely a form of price discounting. If the scheme does nothing to improve your sales, and you issue a price rebate when a customerกs sales reaches a certain level, then all you have succeeded in doing is give away margin.

* Once launched, loyalty schemes are difficult to shut down. You will be taking away something that some of your customers perceive as a benefit, and so this can cause some dissatisfaction amongst certain customer segments.

* The primary purpose of a loyalty scheme is to gather information. Gathering this information is pointless if you don’t have a plan on how to use it. If you don’t have access to some analytical skills, and no marketing campaign capability to use your newfound customer knowledge don’t go down this path.

What Do I Do With All This New Customer Information?

The key activities that this customer information enables are:

* You can identify your best customers, and will know what they buy, how often, and when you last saw them.

You can now focus on nurturing these customers with special offers, or a short newsletter keeping them informed of new products that have just come in, or even presale viewing so that top buyers get first crack at items going onto sale.

* You can look for the common characteristics of your best customers, identify what is the most effective way of marketing to that segment, and then advertise in magazines this segment is most likely to read thereby attracting more higher value customers into your store.

* You can look for customers who do not buy as often, but who have similar demographic and lifestyle characteristics to your best customers. This segment offers the best opportunity via various marketing campaigns be กgrownก into joining the Best Customers group through enticing these customers to allocate a greater share of their wallets to your business.

* You can introduce a referral program where you offer your best customers some sort of reward or prize for introducing some of their friends. Normally like associate with like, so you have a good chance of gaining other high value customers through this highly effective, but low cost way of growing a quality customer base.

Loyalty card programs correctly implemented can assist in growing your base of highly profitable customers. This can only work, however, if the other components of your business instore experience, quality products, good service culture, analytical capability, and marketing campaign smarts are in place. Make sure that the foundations are in place before your leap into a loyalty card scheme.

© 2005 Intellinova (Pty) Ltd. All Rights Reserved

This article may be reprinted, provided it is published in its entirety, includes the author bio information, and all links remain active.

About The Author

For the past 20 years, Jeff Walters has transformed raw data into profitproducing strategic information in various sectors banking, insurance, gambling, medical, government. He has lead several datatoinformation projects: ABC Costing, analytical CRM, datamart development, and Balanced Scorecard.

Want to convert your raw data into strategic assets? Contact Jeff Walters via : www.IntelliNova.com, or www.SystematicDirectMarketing.com.

[email protected]

This article was posted on August 30

by Jeff Walters

Can Three Words In Websterกs Dictionary Be The Key

Can Three Words In Websterกs Dictionary Be The Key To Customer Loyalty?

by: Sean DกSouza

Are you concerned about customer loyalty? Are your customers so loyal that they will stick with you through hell and high water? And if not, you really need to question how you can create a customer relationship that’s so gluey, that you never go bluey in the face. Funnily you don’t have to go far. Reach for your Webster’s dictionary and you’ll discover a hidden secret to customer loyalty.

Do you find it amusing? Giggle if you must, but stick with me and I will show you the simplicity and longevity of this sane advice that will change your marketing strategies and tactics forever.

But First, Let’s Look At Nasty Hurricane Andrew

In August 1992, Hurricane Andrew went bananas. Like a drunk on one too many Tequilas, he tore into South Florida with wind gusts of 175mph, redrawing the landscape as he stomped onwards. Approximately 600,000 homes and businesses bore the brunt of his menace.

By the time Andrew left, he had run up a tab of $26 billion dollars and the curses of some very, very angry insurance companies. Andrew had single handedly run up the highest insurance recorded payout in history – if you don’t count September 11.

Many an insurance company looked gloomily into their crystal balls and decided the future was too dicey. So while they grudgingly forked out the costs required to cover the claims, they refused to renew customer policies.

State Farm Insurance Had a Different Opinion

The biggest reason Hurricane Andrew blew the roofs off the houses was because contractors had not anchored them to the frames. State Farm not only happily forked out the policy claims but also paid its customers more to bring the houses up to code.

Amazingly, this insurance company was willing to overpay just to make sure their customers have peace of mind should Andrew or one of his family come visiting.

State Farm Wasn’t Too Far From the Leo Burnett Advertising Agency

Agencies are like turnstiles. Clients come, clients go and it’s the same mantra for employees. Not if you look at the Chicagobased agency called Leo Burnett. At Leo Burnett, over a fouryear period from 1986 to 1989, 98 per cent of business came bounding back from repeat clients. No other agency even came close.

Furthermore, this Houdini of advertising has had an almost zero client defection rate for decades. In an almost boring, old fashioned way, they adopt a loyalty based management that keeps clients superglued to them. And it continues to amaze and fascinate the roller coaster advertising industry that can only watch in awe and extreme fascination.

Which Brings Us Back to Webster’s, Doesn’t It?

Now let’s look at how Webster’s Dictionary defines the word Client. It says: A client is one who comes under your care, guidance and protection.

See those words?

It doesn’t say someone you need to get money or make profits from. It asks, even beseeches you to care, protect and guide your clients, like you would with your own child. Everything you do, you do unselfishly for that child. You put your heart and soul into creating a safe, educated environment. You become the guide and the protector. You create a bubble as secure as you can to make absolutely sure they get the very best.

Scary, isn’t it? Especially when you look out there at so many companies, whose single motive is to simply get the sale and move on.

Hurricane Andrew Moved On, State Farm Moved Up

As soon as the brouhaha of Andrew’s visit died down, up came the vultures from other insurance companies. They tried to woo State Farm policy holders with discounts and other incentives. Most of them found doors slammed in their face. Their customers were staying loyal no matter what bait was being dangled in front of them. When the chips were down, State Farm pitched in to help like family. There was no way the customers were going to let down their own family.

Adhering strictly to Webster’s, State Farm had cared, guided and protected its clients. And the clients were repaying that with rock solid loyalty.

Leo Burnett Did The Same With This Hidden Clause…

The same principles apply to Leo Burnett. Like mother hens, they fuss over their clients, doing acts of guiding and protecting that other agencies would never even consider. Its first client, Green Giant, is still a customer some sixty years later. Even back then, founder, Leo Burnett, put in an additional clause that enlarged the standard vendor agreement of buying space, producing ads and maintaining confidentiality.

It read: Counselling with you in regard to your advertising and sales efforts, seeking new ways to improve your advertising, make it more productive, and in every way within our power, working with you to advance your business.

Founder Leo has been dead for over 30 years, but the tradition of caring, protecting and guiding doggedly lives on. Their policy is simple. If a customer runs into a bad year and has to cut back on its advertising let’s say by 50 percent Burnett doesn’t automatically cut back on its services by 50 percent and pull half of its management off the account. The company is willing to lose money on an account over the short term.

The inevitable result? Of its 33 clients, 12 have been with the company for over twenty years, and 10 for over thirty years.

Paying Attention to Webster’s Is Not Enough

It needs more. And that more is called sacrifice. Just like with children, you can’t deal with fifty all at once. Each child needs its own time, space and guidance. This requires huge resources, and if you chase every possible client, you’re soon going to run yourself pretty ragged.

The Leo Burnett Agency chooses carefully. It selects its potential clients, as you no doubt will. In 1994, 54 companies invited the agency to talk about a business relationship. Burnett pursued only five.

If your selection of customers isn’t deliberate and systematic, you will run yourself ragged trying to service customers that share neither your dreams nor standards. Invariably, you will find discord and the desire to care, protect and guide will evaporate like moisture on a hot summer’s day.

Care, Protect and Guide – Even If You Have To Send Clients To Your Competition!

If you’re scared, back out now, because I’m going to ask you to do something no seemingly rational business does. That is, you care about your client so much, that you take pains to send them to your competition if you cannot help them.

Hang on. This isn’t as bizarre as it sounds. If you really do care for your clients, you should want them to get the best advice possible. However, no one said you shouldn’t make money off this.

If you sell high end BMWs and you know your client needs a more economical Toyota, you should logically send them over to your competition. However, if you set up a deal with the Toyota dealer, you can not only generate a commission, but also give your potential client a bonus or discount if they go specifically through you.

Hey, those customers are going to walk anyway, once they find their exact needs aren’t being met. And if they get stuck with something they don’t really need, they’re going to be mighty mad once they find out. You aren’t doing yourself or them a favour by making them stick to what you have to offer. Sending them to a competitor that you know will treat them well, endears you to the customer and ensures a tidy profit as well.

Welcome To The Land Of Endless Loyalty

Loyalty at its very roots is exceedingly simple. It’s exactly like a parentchild relationship. While no doubt you will come to depend on technology as your client base grows, the enduring thread that binds it all is the underlying psychology.

Inevitably, you won’t always have a troublefree course, and both Leo Burnett and State Farm have had stormy days. The only way out of the driving rain is to heartily embrace the care, guidance and protection concept. Let it be your guiding light, far superior to any mumbo jumbo mission statement, leading to exponential profits and devoted clients.

All you have to do to succeed is play Mother Hen.

And say a silent thank you to a certain Mr.Webster.

* Source: The Loyalty Factor by Frederick Reichheld.

** Secondary Source: Me. I worked at Leo Burnett in the 90’s.

Footnote:

This Care, Protect and Guidance, is the same system that PsychoTactics uses for its subscribers, members and clients. Should you come under our wing, we would do everything in our possible power to get you the best knowledge and guidance. This is the whole ethos, the guiding principle of why we exist and why your business should exist. If you adopt this concept in your every day business, youกll have nothing but unending success.

About The Author

© 20012005 Psychotactics Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

Sean DกSouza

If you would like to learn more about the way the human brain works, and how customers make buying decisions, go to http://www.5000bc.com

Want to find a secret library of small business ideas? Where can you find simple, yet electrifying ideas, on copywriting, public speaking, sales conversion, psychological tactics and branding? Head down to http://www.5000bc.com today and judge for yourself.

P.S. If you like the article, feel free to share it with your own list, post it on your site, post it on your blog, or add it to your autoresponder.As long as you leave it intact and do not alter it in anyway. The authors byline, biography and brought to you by link must remain in the article. Please notify me where my article is used online and off line.

[email protected]

This article was posted on February 14, 2005

by Sean DกSouza

Whatกs Love Got To Do With It?

Whatกs Love Got To Do With It?

by: JoAnna Brandi

Customer Loyalty, we all want it. Don’t we?

Some people say it’s dead they say that customers are fickle, that they don’t want loyalty, that they just want the lowest price and the fastest way to get it. Some say that customers have changed and that the pursuit of loyalty is foolish, since it’s the customers that are not interested in it. I don’t agree. Loyalty is not DEAD, it’s just sleeping.

I agree that customers have changed (because our needs have changed). We’re more demanding than ever before, we have more choices than ever before, we’re more educated than most of the companies we do business with (about their products and their competitive position). And here’s the truth: we don’t give our loyalty to companies that don’t give their loyalty to us.

Companies have in the last ten years made it more difficult, more confusing, and more frustrating to deal with them than ever before. They give all the กspecial offersก to the new customers; they’ve removed human beings from answering phones and answering questions. They make us pump our own gas, check on our packages, book our own airline tickets and figure out when they’ve made mistakes on our accounts. They cut their training budgets and have trimmed their service staffs to the bone. They pay big bonuses at the top, but at the bottom of the corporate pyramid, where the customers lie (if they make the pyramid at all) they charge us fees for the privilege of using their services!

Is it no wonder we’ve become rather selective to whom we pledge our loyalty?

No, customer loyalty is not dead, but it is ailing. It is given only to those companies that earn it and keep earning it by delivering value and positive experiences on a consistent basis.

Companies that want to Thrive…not just survive in this century better figure out fast that keeping more of their customers, and keeping them happy is a critical economic necessity.

Good and loyal customers are critical to profitability. Estimates are that it costs 6 30 times more to get new customers than it does to maintain the ones you have. If you keep losing customers and have to keep replacing them, it makes sense that you are spending money on sales and marketing that could be going elsewhere.

It’s your LOYAL customers that give you referrals and sing your praises in your advertising and testimonials. Referral business is like กfreeก new customers. So the money you would have paid to GET the new customer drops back down to your bottom line.

I find it is sadly true that most companies don’t have a strategic plan for keeping customers, keeping them happy OR keeping them coming back time and time again with their money and their friends. Even though Customer Loyalty was determined to be a #1 concern of CEO’s (according to the Conference Board) how many companies do more than pay lip service to the importance of customer service and loyalty in their organization? Your guess is as good as mine. Based on the service I receive as a customer, well, I can understand why more customers aren’t loyal, can you?

What can YOU do to change that? What can you do to turn the tide on this disturbing trend and develop long lasting, loyal customer relationships?

And what’s LOVE got to do with it?

Everything. Business is based on relationships and relationships are based on qualities such as trust, respect, appreciation, understanding, generosity, clear open and honest communication and heavy doses of kindness, compassion and affection. Sometimes known as LOVE.

Studies show that the main reason customers will leave a company they are doing business with is that they perceive the company does not care about them or their needs. And conversely, studies show that when asked why they stay loyal to a particular company for a long time, customers respond, กBecause they cared about me.ก This perception and feeling of caring is the emotional bridge between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. And, it’s often the bridge between lackluster profits and thriving good health on the bottom line.

Itกs about emotion. Loyalty is an emotional attachment to a company based on the customer’s subjective perception that the company is delivering the value they desire or need, when and how they need it. It’s based on their needs, and it’s based on their experience of doing business with us. As a customer myself, I know that the companies I chose to give my loyalty to are those that make me feel good about the whole experience of doing business with them.

When we FEEL good about doing business with a company we form emotional ties, not just financial ties with them. Let’s face it, customers are emotionally attached to their money if we want them to give some of it to us we need to get them emotionally attached to US.

Emotions have been กundiscussableก in business for a long time. กFeelingsก is the กFก word of the business world. How many times have we heard that we are to keep our feelings out of it, keep our emotions away from our business decisions, and park our personal problems at the door? Sound familiar? Well, I’ve learned that you cannot expect your staff to bring their passion to work but not their feelings. It just doesn’t work that way. It’s time we developed an emotional literacy in business.

Employees and Customers are people. People have feelings. And as people, their decisions are effected by their feelings, whether they can identify the feelings or not. Any salesperson can tell you that while people make decisions that look logical, they are more often than not, based on emotion.

As people we are perceptive, conscious, sensitive, alive and feeling beings! It’s an essential part of our nature. When we recognize that in business, we’ll work harder at building the emotional equity with a customer that determines whether or not they become a loyal customer or a lost customer.

It is the perception, the feeling of being cared about that keeps the customers coming back. And it’s what we do to build and support and create that feeling that creates a positive experience for the customer.

Every customer has two sets of needs. The business needs are logical, rational, and practical. The personal needs are emotional, illogical and sometimes even irrational, but carry a lot of weight. The fulfillment of the customer’s business needs is usually what gets them in the door in the first placeyou are selling what they need. But it’s the fulfillment of the customer’s personal needs that will keep them coming back. Once the business needs are met, they often take a back seat to the customer’s experiential needs.

It’s the quality of the emotional experience you have with a company that will determine whether or not you want to keep recreating that experience. We come back to companies that have what we want and create a positive experience for us. We leave companies that don’t have what we want or create a negative experience for us. Experience is emotional.

When a customer walks away from the whole experience (your greeting, interacting with your Web site, the dealing with people in your office…) of doing business with you with positive emotions like happiness, joy, delight, caring, security, welcome and appreciationthey will most likely want to come back (if you recreate the positive emotions consistently).

If they walk away from the experience with negative emotions like frustration, anger, disgust, fear, incompetence, indifference, if they leave with a lack of confidence, if they leave feeling stupidand if that’s what’s delivered consistentlythey usually don’t stay around unless they haven’t YET found some other place to go.

It’s the quality of the emotional experiences that customers have with you that will determine whether or not they will continue to do business with you over time.

What’s LOVE got to do with it? Maybe more than we thought!

Tim Sanders, Chief Solutions Officer, Yahoo writing in กLove is the Killer App,ก says กWhat do I mean by กlove?ก The best general definition that Iกve read comes from philosopher Milton Mayeroffกs brilliant book, On Caring. Love, he writes, ‘is the selfless promotion of the growth of the other.’ When you help others grow to become the best people that they can be, you are being loving, and as a result, you grow.ก

What a great description for what we want to happen in our business relationships! I want to do business with a company that believes in the selfless promotion of the growth of ME and my business! I want to give my money to companies that want to help me be the best ME I can bewhether I’m buying cosmetics or computers or telephone service or food. I want to do business with someone who has my best interests in mind.

In lieu of that I’ll do my own research, haul my own lumber and pump my own gas but if I’m doing the service workthen I want the lowest price possible! I’m not loyal to companies that don’t care enough about me to make my experience with them easy, stress and hassle free, and pleasant. How about you?

What’s love got to do with it? A whole lot more than we ever thought. Let’s start doing a better job of creating experiences that the customer perceives as positive, caring, and yes, maybe even loving.

About The Author

JoAnna Brandi is Publisher of JoAnna Brandiกs Customer Care Coach TM, a weekly training program designed to teach managers กThe Art and Science of Exquisite Customer Care.ก You can sign up to get her latest tips and get your personalized weekly coaching program at www.customercarecoach.com. You can reach her via email: [email protected]

This article was posted on March 26, 2004

by JoAnna Brandi