Cus­tomer loy­alty is the golden ticket to long term com­pany suc­cess. Loyal cus­tomers pro­vide repeat busi­ness and rec­om­mend prod­ucts and ser­vices to friends and fam­ily. It is com­mon knowl­edge that acquir­ing a new cus­tomer costs at least five times more than retain­ing an exist­ing cus­tomer. What can your com­pany do to “prove itself” and earn the respect and loy­alty of customers?

Treat Your Cur­rent Cus­tomers Like Gold

In terms of mar­ket­ing and refer­rals, loyal cus­tomers equal dol­lar signs.  It’s not enough to meet their needs by pro­vid­ing ade­quate ser­vice; to gain the loy­alty of cur­rent cus­tomers and a rep­u­ta­tion among prospec­tive cus­tomers, the ser­vice offered by all the client-facing depart­ments of your orga­ni­za­tion has to be excep­tional.  Even com­pa­nies with very good rep­u­ta­tions for cus­tomer ser­vice don’t rest on their lau­rels; they con­tinue to pro­vide train­ing and coach­ing for their client-facing representatives.

Watch Your Commitments

In the process of secur­ing a sale, make sure not to promise any­thing your orga­ni­za­tion can’t deliver.  The long term effects are dev­as­tat­ing and will come back to haunt even the most expe­ri­enced sales pro­fes­sional.  Noth­ing under­mines loy­alty faster than a loss of credibility.

Make It Easy For New Cus­tomers to Love You

There’s a say­ing among ad agen­cies: “The day you sign a new client is the day you begin los­ing them.”  The sad truth is that many times we put our best resources into the acqui­si­tion of new clients, some­times at the expense of what we need to do to retain them.  Since loyal cus­tomers are our best form adver­tis­ing, and because it’s at least five-to-ten times more costly to acquire a new cus­tomer than to retain one, think about all you can do to wel­come new cus­tomers.  Con­sider video tuto­ri­als, toll free num­bers, sur­veys to see if they are using your prod­uct or ser­vice as eas­ily and as often as antic­i­pated, call backs to ensure they had an easy sales process and that any unex­pected issues were resolved to their satisfaction.

Make It Easy For Cus­tomers to Com­plain

Robert Stephens, founder of The Geek Squad, believes that it’s impor­tant to make it easy for cus­tomers to com­plain.  Com­plaints are an essen­tial part of cus­tomer feed­back; if there’s some­thing wrong, we want peo­ple to tell us.   The eas­ier you make it for cus­tomers to com­plain, the more likely they will be to give you a chance to save them as cus­tomers.  It’s been shown that cus­tomers who have had their prob­lems resolved quickly and pro­fes­sion­ally are more loyal than cus­tomers who have never had a problem.

Lis­ten and Act 

It’s one thing to give peo­ple an oppor­tu­nity to offer their com­ments; it’s another to take action on it.  This is one of the prin­ci­ples that Microsoft lever­aged in their recent Win­dows 7 cam­paign with the state­ment “Win­dows 7 was my idea.”  Cus­tomers feel val­i­dated when the com­pa­nies with whom they do busi­ness take their sug­ges­tions seri­ously enough to incor­po­rate them into their prod­ucts.  You want more cus­tomer loy­alty?  Lis­ten to them, and act on what they tell you when­ever possible!

These are some ways to earn more of the cur­rency that is cus­tomer loy­alty. How is your com­pany keep­ing cus­tomers loyal?

Click here to read Loy­alty: The Cur­rency of Cus­tomer Sat­is­fac­tion — Part 1.

Seth Brick­ner is a Devel­oper and Facil­i­ta­tor with Impact Learn­ing Sys­tems Inter­na­tional. In addi­tion to train­ing and devel­op­ment, his back­ground includes edu­ca­tion, tech­ni­cal sup­port and cus­tomer ser­vice. When not trav­el­ing or in front of a com­puter mon­i­tor, Seth can be found run­ning, cook­ing, play­ing gui­tar, read­ing, con­vinc­ing him­self he can sing, or enjoy­ing the hik­ing trails of Colorado.

Seth Brickner

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