How to get a real and long-term customer loyalty? Why is it fading away? What strategy should you implement not only to maintain but to improve this loyalty and overall customer experience?

Loyal Customer and his favor. Banks, telecommunication or even retail companies desire this. It’s not enough for the customer to be just ‘satisfied.’ It is important for the customer to ‘adopt the brand as a part of his family.’ He needs to think about it, to talk about it with his acquaintances, and to defend it from adversaries. He should simply fall in love with it. Who doesn’t like to love and to be loved? But to love a company, a brand? Yes. We are looking for a formula that creates and emotional bond between the customer and the brand. Anointed heads of international business already have a strategy – building an excellent customer experience. Is it something new, or just an old truth dressed in a new outfit? How to achieve it in the environment of the complex business of mega corporations? Why don’t traditional approaches work? Does an alternative exist? Read about my views on this issue.

Change is needed – customer requests personal approach

During the ongoing crisis of consumption, the customer is increasingly resistant to standard marketing pressure. More epical, humorous and psychologically sharpened media spots no longer bring customers to shops and the price seems to be the only important loyalty parameter.

The customer also reacts with exasperation to arrogant mannerisms of “his company” with which he has made his contractual commitments (hidden fees, aggressive terms and conditions, etc.). He shows his frustration not only at home or at the customer service line but shares it with his community on the Internet, where any problem is stripped off in a missile speed, and a ripple effect of the discontented masses threatens the stability of large companies now in an unprecedented way. The customer wants to feel like a customer again and asks for more.

The traditional project approach fails

Headquarters of international corporations got alerted a while ago, understand the situation and act. Good old motto “Our customer – our master” is being dusted up frantically and gets a new modern jacket called “Customer experience”. To create an emotional relationship, it is not enough to avoid customers’ anger during the interaction with the company. It is necessary to achieve that he has a pleasant sense of pride, satisfaction and the need to share this “love” with at least 10 friends and acquaintances. The often cited ideal examples are brands like Apple or Harley-Davidson with their mass of fanatical admirers. They are able to keep them “boiling” and strongly benefit from that.

Therefore, the CEO is given a personal task: Build up an excellent customer experience! We want to see results in “a year and a day” from now. To build customer love for the firm systematically. Is this not a task worth the best paid employee? :-)

So the traditional scenario begins, usually taking this or similar course:

Stage 1: Organizational change and job delegation, internal project

CEO will establish a new position of “Director of customer experience” that reports directly to him (with the first step in a standard management – delegation of tasks is fulfilled). The new position is needed, the role as a whole cannot be delegated to any on the existing mangers because its scope exceeds every single functional area. A new strategic initiative is announced – customer experience project. The new director has a green light, convenes off-site meeting, organizes working groups, creates the first action plans. Working groups enthusiastically throw themselves into the work.

Stage 2: The crisis and the onset of consultants

After the first few weeks, it appears that it will not be easy. Working groups have difficulties to agree in identifying the key issues and priorities, daily problems and firefighting slow the process and the initial enthusiasm begin to fade. Then a respected consulting company comes to the scene with a proposal to the CEO of a solution in the form of a 6 week project backed up by a proven methodology. The presence of expensive consultants again revitalizes the organization and gets priorities back where they should be. In a furious pace, concepts with names such as “Mapping the customer journey,” “Analysis of moments of truth” or hypotheses regarding the “moments of bliss” (what would the customer could please) are generated.

A set of new of measurement indicators (KPIs) and strategic projects is designed, the final report is approved.

Stage 3: The Success (really?)

The CEO reports to his superiors about the successful implementation of this strategic project and the consultants issue a final invoice. Employees (including top management) breathe a sigh of relief that consultants are gone, and they can reduce their 12-hour working day back to the standard 10 hours and things are getting back into a rut. The market is ruthless. It is necessary to deliver immediate quantifiable results first. Management addresses other hot topics. Director of customer experience gets into the side role with no decision-making powers. Great plan ends successfully on paper only. Indeed, it is possible that the project sponsor is the CEO failed? :-)

The real change, that the customer would feel, did not happen. The ambitious plan, together with the final project report are filed into the company’s archives.

Lessons from family businesses – it will not work without personal commitment

Standard project approach fails, but the objective must be achieved. Where to get inspired? I think each of us has a store in the neighbourhood where he is tempted to make an unplanned stop when passing by. It can be a smell of a fresh baked bread from the local bakery or a pleasant atmosphere of a small family bookstore. The owner or someone from the family is behind the counter, remembers you, pays attention, offers a smile. Regardless of whether you pay 10 Kc or the entire thousand. He knows that the game is to make you come again tomorrow. And what about you? Do you have reason to look for a competitor? Probably not. Is it likely that you recommend the store to your friends? Probably yes – because you are interested in its prosperity so that you do not have to look for an alternative.

For a small business, cultivation of emotional satisfaction and customer experience is a matter of survival and it is a natural part of the job. But not without the effort. It’s very likely that this issue occupies the owner’s mind day and night. He must tune small details of the offer to reflect on the comments that he heard from customers today, think how to please regular customers to experience new things and reach new ones. He is personally involved, is dedicated to detail and knows that this is his mission.

So when and how the growing business loses the ability to keep “emotional connection” with customers? By loss of personal involvement. Employees who only work up to the “level of their salary” do not wonder how to please the customer but rather follow the watch not to miss the end of working hours. With the growth in the number of branches, the owner is not able to oversee the detail himself. He hires professional management, who deal with “growth” because they are paid for it. Specialized departments like “sales”, “marketing”, “finance” are being established, each one developing its own philosophy that is often in conflict with the other ones. In an extreme case, the company will become so complex that a (sad) joke it will circulate like : “We can make ourselves so busy all day – we do not need customers for it”. Without personal involvement and constant attention to detail customer intimacy cannot be achieved. Big projects, incremental improvements of “moments of truth” or elimination of most critical pain points in contact with customers will not result in the final goal.

Let us revitalize the spirit of small business and we win

I believe that the revitalization of the lost trading spark is the right way for all companies wishing to emerge from the crisis stronger and ready for more demanding customers. What approach should be chosen, when strategic projects managed from headquarters so often lose their teeth? I have my view, based on both my personal experience, but also of common sense. I will share it with you in the following article.