7 PRINCIPLES to Increase Customer Loyalty1.Know Yourself. 2. Follow the Golden Rule. 3. Establish a personal relationship. 4. Build a reputation for reliability. 5. Deliver first-class Customer Service. 6. Handle Complaint Management Well. 7. Loyalty Programs.

1st Principle: Know Yourself

One way to differentiate yourself from the competition is to increase your understanding of what your customers experience when they interact with your business. This opens up avenues for making effective improvements and innovations to your services or products. And a powerful tool to boost your understanding of that customer experience is G.W.R.‘s Customer Journey Map (CJM), documenting the customer experience through their perspective, helping you best understand how customers are interacting with you now and helping you identify areas for improvement moving forward.

Don’t make it too complex. It is easy to get caught up in the multiple routes a customer might take, resulting in “Analysis Paralysis”. The CJM is a tool to help you easily understand customers so tell a simple story to focus people’s attention on the customer’s needs.

Use a memorable format. Whether you use an infographic, a storyboard or even a video for your CJM, the goal is to ensure that the user’s story remains front and center in people’s minds, highlighting their needs, questions and feelings throughout their interaction with the organization.

Be very clear about what the journey map will be used for. Determine what your primary business objective is for creating a CJM (improve your current customer experience, envision your future customer experience, drive organizational change) and keep your strategic goals in the forefront to guide you in your employment of journey maps.

Include Metrics. Simply mapping the journey isn’t enough; you need metrics to use the CJM to improve market performance. Depending on your business and insights that are produced, include critical metrics at each stage along the customer journey that you can use later to assess improvements in your performance. Take action. Journey maps aren’t meant to be purely illustrative. They should identify a few quick fixes, including opportunities to boost enjoyment and improve the journey, and lead to specific actions that improve the experience and drive the ROI to justify the effort and increase internal support.

Benchmark. Once you have established a CJM for your business, it is worth benchmarking your performance against the competition to uncover opportunities to differentiate yourself, giving you the competitive edge.

“Customer journeys are 30%-40% more predictive of customer satisfaction than touchpoints.” McKinsey

2nd Principle: Follow the Golden Rule: Treat Others as You Would like to be treated.

This seems self-evident, but as the size of your business increases, along with your distance from the front lines, how can you ensure that your customers are being treated in a manner that keeps them coming back?

The best way to discover how to treat a customer is to be one. Many multinationals include “Market Visits” and “Home Visits” in their executives’ monthly calendars. Plan regular visits to competitors’ outlets, recording your impressions of what they are doing well, and what can be improved. See what take-home messages can be implemented to improve your Customer Experience.

Don’t assume your employees care about your customers, build employee loyalty. Make employees invested in your success through reward schemes, training & team building. And don’t forget the

personal touch; take the time to get to know employees on a personal level with "pulse check" conversations and gestures they will appreciate such as sending flowers if they’ve had a baby. If you’re loyal to your employees, they’ll feel good about their jobs and pass that loyalty along to your customers.

Train employees thoroughly. Investing in training employees increases their loyalty to you and improves Customer Service. Make sure that your staff understands everything they can about your products and service, including old standbys that just keep selling, and periodically hold “refresher” sessions.

“Every contact we have with a customer influences whether or not they’ll come back. We have to be great every time or we’ll lose them.” Kevin Stirtz

3rd Principle: Establish a Personal Relationship with Each Individual Customer

Strong customer relationships drive sales, sustainability, and growth. Companies that build and maintain deep customer and client relationships lead the pack. Aim to become their “First Call” - customers should have your company “Top of Mind” when they are planning a project, a purchase or just need help.

Make a personal connection.Customers remember the first and last moments of their interaction with you far more than anything that happens in the middle, so make sure you say Hello and Goodbye, address

customers by name and encourage your employees to introduce themselves to customers. This kind of treatment makes people feel important and respected, and is one of the reasons they’ll return to your business. Forbes conducted a study of consumers’ buying behavior after manipulating only the way they were greeted (2011). One group was welcomed with a friendly smile the other with a straight face. Not surprisingly, the smile group bought more items and paid more for each one.

Communicate with your customers. Collect customer contact info and don’t forget to use it! Reach out to your customers regularly, updating them on promotions and new items. If there’s a social media element to your business, invite people to your page or website and keep that online element fresh. All of your messages don’t need to be advertising — some can be useful information or can serve the community.

Use various customer feedback channels. No one denies the usefulness of candid, insightful customer feedback, use the following to get consistent (and high quality) feedback from current and prospective customers: Empower customer-facing employees: Create a culture in which your employees are always looking and listening, and, at the right time, are empowered to act. Social Media: Be sure to monitor your business profile across all sites so you can address any negative comments or thank posters for positive feedback. As well as Facebook and Twitter, don’t forget to include industry specific social media like Yelp, Foursquare, Google+, TripAdvisor…

Hire a third-party customer feedback provider. Well designed Customer Satisfaction Surveys yield greater actionable insights. G.W.R. creates customer surveys that ask the right questions and are optimized enough to get high survey response rates.

Respond. Once feedback starts coming in, you need to respond. Every last piece of feedback should get a response, even if you have no idea what the customer is talking about.

“The more you engage with customers, the clearer things become and the easier it is to determine what you should be doing.” John Russell, President, Harley-Davidson

4th Principle: Build a Reputation for Reliability

While an intangible concept, having a good reputation can benefit a business in a multitude of ways including: consumer preference; support for an organization in times of crisis or controversy; and the future value of an organization in the marketplace.

Organizations can build their reputations in a number of ways:

Establish trust.

Keeping your word no matter what in terms of providing services, paying vendors when they are due, and keeping promises to customers. This will help solidify and build credibility with customers.

Be responsive. Return calls and answer emails promptly, letting the customer know their importance to you and your organization.

Resolve errors and mistakes. Never make excuses or place blame on the customer if it is an issue that is the fault of you or the company. An irate customer can become your biggest ally if you make an effort to resolve errors or mistakes as quickly as possible.

Offer value. Offering free services to loyal customers and paying attention to details and preferences of the customer can go a long way towards establishing your company’s reputation in the market.

Be sensitive to privacy. With rampant identity theft and hacking, being aware of the sensitive nature of financial information is more important than ever.

Become technologically savvy .Demonstrating a proficiency in technology can add to the reputation of a company and is critical to being perceived as a

competent and capable business. Computers, software, voicemail, websites, and social media sites must be kept up to date.

Communicate effectively and transparently. Correspondence such as letters, emails, voicemails and other methods of communication should be direct and to the point. Use correct spelling and grammar and leave contact information for the customer and company information such as full name, address, phone, fax, website URL, toll-free number, hours and other vital information – is displayed in prominent location.

Maintain a polished and professional website. Having a clean, up-to-date, professional website is absolutely vital today, regardless of the type or size of business.

Community Service. Generosity to local organizations such as non-profits can go a long way toward building and establishing the reputation of your organization. Community service can include providing a service pro bono or donating money, time or food for an event or fundraiser.

5th Principle: Deliver First-Class Customer Service

Customers remember being treated well and positive customer experiences result in repeat business. Additionally, according to Forbes, 71% of customers that leave a business do so after a bad customer service experience. The essence of good customer service is forming a relationship with customers. The

points below are easily implemented in any size of business, and should show immediate results.

Go the extra mile to meet customer needs.Often simply doing the little things, and occasionally pulling out the stops to service your customer provides that customer with the extra mile. » Rather than give your customer another number to call – do a warm call transfer. » Don’t just tell your customer where to find something, walk them to it. » Ask if there is anything else you can do for your customer. » Check back with your customer to see that they have found everything they needed/ their problem has been solved. » Don’t give up. Maybe you can’t find what they’re looking for. Propose alternative solutions, even if there isn’t a satisfactory conclusion, they’ll remember your investment & effort.

Be flexible with policies.Do everything within reason to solve customer problems or complaints. Since the 1980s at the Ritz-Carlton each staff member has a $2,000 discretionary fund per guest, which is used to solve any customer complaint in a manner entirely decided upon by the employee, giving staff the decision-making freedom in order to create an amazing customer experience.

Have generous return policies. Zappos found that having a generous 365-day return policy actually increased their sales resulting in an average 150% higher spending by Zappos customers.

Be quick to reply. Make sure you give timely responses to questions and concerns. By responding quickly, you can actually increase loyalty.

Provide content as customer service. Nothing is more frustrating to customers than confusion over how to use your product. Many customer retention issues can be avoided by proactively offering resources to help customers navigate your product immediately after they buy it. Guides and video tutorials are one level of support; another is offering training services or consultations after a purchase.

6th Principle: Handle Complaint Management Well

No business is perfect, and mistakes will happen. Pay attention to customer concerns and complaints. By letting you know when they’re dissatisfied, your customers give you an opportunity to resolve their issue and to improve your service. If you do it well, your customers will remember your positive and helpful approach and they can be turned into a highly loyal customer. If you do it badly, Social Media has opened up a whole different means for customers to share their dissatisfaction with the world.

Don’t get defensive and don’t shift the blame. When an issue does arise, acknowledge it, apologize, and address it as quickly as possible.

Be glad. Maintain an upbeat and positive attitude toward your customers when they are complaining. Research shows that for every customer who bothers to complain, nearly 26 others remain silent (White House Office of Consumer Affairs); they simply leave and buy from your competitors. You have an opportunity here to turn a dissatisfied customer into a passionate advocate for your brand.

Make it easy to complain. Make sure that there’s a clear and accessible way for customers to communicate with you, whether it’s in person, by phone, or by email, and that you have someone assigned to customer service on an ongoing basis. Encourage customers to give you feedback through in-store forms, contact forms online, a CS hotline and frontline staff.

Don’t hide behind technology. Make sure that you clearly communicate to customers how they can get a real person to help them if they want. Not being able to reach a live person is the No. 1 complaint about customer service, according to a new survey by Consumer Reports.

Solve the problem quickly. Research indicates that customers prefer the person they are speaking with to instantly solve their problem. Use metrics like “time to first response” and “time to resolution” to make sure you’re giving timely responses to questions and concerns. According to RightNow, the number one reason customers stop doing business with a company is a poor customer service

experience, with 55% stating that issues weren’t resolved in a timely manner.

Silence is not golden. Even if you haven’t managed to solve the problem yet, regular updates will assure your customers that you haven’t forgotten them and by keeping them updated, you can avoid frustration and actually increase loyalty.

“If your customer goes home mad it is not only too late, but they will tell many people THEIR STORY. But if you can catch them and correct the error, now they're possibly telling YOUR STORY!” Jake Poore, Walt Disney Company

7th Principle: Loyalty Programs

Having an effective loyalty program in place gives you the ability to identify, track, and custom promote to those customers who are most likely to become loyal, long-term sources of revenue. This is true only for those programs that have been drafted with great thought and after a good deal of research. If you are looking at launching a customer loyalty program in the near future, these tips will help you develop a successful one.

Don’t assume you know what they want. Avoid misreading customers by focusing on actual customer behavior. Use data from your Loyalty Schemes and web-analytics to analyze customers’ past and present behavior to

better predict their future behavior and strategize accordingly. IBM’s customer relationship study of 2011 shows how wrong companies can be about what their customers are thinking. A majority of companies listed discounts and purchases among the least important reasons customers followed them on social sites, but the customers themselves listed discounts and purchases as the major reasons for following a company on a social site.

Pilot programs help refine strategies. Avoid rushing into a loyalty program without understanding what is best for your business, Pilot Test different types of programs in the initial months to see what works best for your customers. Testing and tenement are key to developing a product that will appeal to your best customers.

Make it easy for your customers. Make it easy for customers to sign-up for your loyalty program and give them options of how they would like to access it (card, mobile, POS, web). Prior to the national rollout of their Balance® Rewards program, Walgreens implemented a new POS system that provided customers with paperless enrolment, eased the sign-up process and was crucial to the success of the program. On day one, Walgreens had just short of one million members enrolled. Members currently have the choice of using their Balance® Rewards card, the mobile app or the POS terminal to access their program upon checkout.

Give them a head start. The closer people get to completing a goal, the more effort they exert toward achieving that goal. Even artificial progress has an impact on consumer motivation because it gives customers the feeling that they have already surpassed the most challenging aspect — getting started. No matter what you choose to do for advancement, make sure the reason for the bonus is well-defined. People won’t be swayed by artificial advancement if they don’t know why they’ve received the extra boost in the first place.

Conclusion

As markets become increasingly more competitive, scale, user acquisition, and marketing can’t be the only basket in which you keep all your eggs. Marketing may get your name out there, but will people stick around? Will first-time customers turn into loyal, long term advocates? As I have shown, Customer Loyalty matters if you want your business to be more than just another statistic. I hope you use my 7 Principles to create a customer experience that delights customers, gets them talking about you and allows your business to thrive.