A brilliant and successful businessperson recently shared why he loves his angriest customers. Phil Libin, CEO and co-founder of Evernote, wrote an article for Inc. where he explained that customer feedback is essential to the growth of any business. All companies solicit feedback from their customers be it via online or physical surveys, suggestion boxes or some other way. Even companies that don’t solicit it, get it.

According to Mr. Libin, there are three types of customer feedback: complaints, suggestions and compliments. For any of this feedback to matter, you first have to have a leadership team that not only cares, but knows how to handle each of these. He explains that while suggestions are great, other than an occasional nugget of inspiration, they have very little value for improving your product or service. Compliments are always wonderful and have value in that you can hear what you’re doing right. They can also increase employee morale; but only if you share them; which many managers fail to do. The real value in customer feedback; the one Phil not only says he loves but also feels holds the most value; is complaints.

As most dealerships know, angry customers are typically the most vocal and will more frequently vent that anger towards you either directly (via e-mail, letter or a phone call) or indirectly (via an online review, social media post, etc.). The problem, he says, is that most people charged with monitoring feedback take complaints personally. Many times this is simply due to the fact they have no experience with being criticized online.

“Complaints are great; the more detailed, the better. They tell us where our product or overall experience is failing. Plus, they are the easiest form of feedback to get. No training or solicitation required. People are naturally good at complaining...” says Libin.

Complaints are actionable items that can assist you in identifying areas of your business that needs improvement. You cannot expect to increase customer retention and build loyal customers if you’re not willing to listen to what they believe is wrong. Remember, they are your customers. While you may think your product or service is the best in the universe; chances are you aren’t your company’s source of revenue. It’s the customers’ opinions that matter.

Make sure that you have a leadership team in tune with customer feedback that knows how to properly manage, and respond, when necessary. You don’t have to make every change suggested in every complaint - the point is that you need to listen. Don’t just listen to feedback sent directly to you; but also make sure you are paying attention and monitoring for the feedback that customers are sharing with others.

Your customers are your business’s most important assets. Without them, all you’ll have are some pretty desks and technology… and even that won’t be for long! Take the time to not only solicit feedback from your customers but listen to the feedback that is the hardest to listen to: complaints.

Sometimes the truth hurts but as I’m sure you’ve heard before… “No Pain. No Gain.”

I came across an article recently by Jeffrey Gitomer that really hit home. In essence, he said that there are countless awards given out for levels of “customer satisfaction” by many companies including the likes of JD Powers, and Consumer Reports. The winners of those awards publicize their victories in their marketing to attract new customers and give themselves pats on the back. In his opinion, however, all of those awards for “customer satisfaction” levels are meaningless. In fact, he said that not only are they meaningless, they are worthless.

His view is that customer satisfaction is synonymous with “mediocre” and “anyone that posts a ‘satisfaction’ award has an army of people that hate them for the lousy service they provide, AND a bigger army of people laughing at the audacity and the phoniness of the [award]”.

Gitomer explains why, “Satisfaction is the LOWEST level of customer service. And, in the end, means nothing.”

If customer satisfaction is meaningless, what should we be looking at?

“Customer loyalty is all that matters,” writes Gitomer.

A satisfied customer is simply one who believes that the service you’ve provided is acceptable to them. What it does NOT mean is that they would continue to do business with you, recommend your business to their family and friends, or proactively become a brand evangelist for you. A satisfied customer could be one that does business with you because your business is convenient for them. They are happy enough that the inconvenience of going somewhere else outweighs the convenience of staying. That’s not something to be proud of.

What we really should be measuring is customer loyalty. Gitomer defines a loyal customer as; “people who will do business with you again, tell others about you, and refer others to do business with you.”

Your customer loyalty levels have much more meaning than any customer satisfaction statistic or award. CEOs of many of the largest companies in the world started with mission statements not based on growth and market share, but on winning loyal customers. Gitomer poses the example of Hugh McColl, former Chairman and CEO of Bank of America. McColl was a driving force behind consolidating a series of progressively larger, mostly Southern banks, thrifts and financial institutions into a super-regional banking force. Gitomer stated: “His philosophy was simple: ‘I take care of my people, my people take care of my customers, my customers take care of my shareholders.’"

Up until recently most companies have been all about measuring customer satisfaction to judge performance through surveys and various other statistics. How do you measure customer loyalty? It’s simple. Start counting repeat and referred customers, sales and profit.  And according to Gitomer; “The rest is bogus.”

Customer loyalty is a circular chain that starts at the organizational level. I’ve written many articles about the importance of customer loyalty, and my company’s purpose is to help businesses retain and create loyal customers, which is why this article really hit home with me. Everything we do at Performance Loyalty Group, including our loyalty program and pre-paid maintenance program, is designed with this exact purpose in mind.

The next time you’re evaluating your company’s performance in relation to “customer satisfaction,” instead of asking, “How did we do?” start asking “Would you give me a testimonial?”  Or “Would you refer someone to us?” The customer’s willingness to do (or not do) either one of those things will tell you more about how well you’re doing than any trophy ever could.

In the past, it wasn’t uncommon for employees to spend their whole working lives with a single company. People would start in their late teens and many would retire without ever having worked anywhere else. However, businesses, in general, and dealerships, specifically, are experiencing less loyalty from employees today than ever before in history. Why?

According to Orlando Barone of The Wharton School of Business, Gen Y has been educated and trained to be transactional managers and leaders. "I got the impression they perceived themselves more loyal to their values than to a particular company or organization," Barone said. "They would be loyal to a place that enabled them to make the kind of impact they would like to make. I did not sense that they would be likely to identify with their organizations as if it were a sort of home or family. And reciprocally, they do not expect that kind of loyalty from their employer." He goes on to say that employers who allow them to be these types of managers and leaders can earn a great deal of loyalty from them.

The labor laws of today encourage freedom. Freedoms of an employee to work where they want to as well as the freedom of employers to hire whom they want and to let them go when they’re ready to. Gone are the days of commitments that must be upheld by either an employee or an employer. Every day we see major players in key industries either leaving large, respected companies to start their own businesses or join competitors. 

Working in the car business is a very taxing career. There are many late hours and not as many days off, especially in sales. Several positions are commission-based, which introduces stress into the equation as well. Combine these factors with a general lack of loyalty and you get a recipe for high turnover.

So how is a dealership supposed to combat this shift in attitude and increase employee loyalty?

The first thing that could be done is to create an environment that is conducive to family-life. Recognizing that for most of your employees, family comes first and respecting and encouraging that puts your dealership in line with their values. Creating an environment in which someone would want to work is also important. Employees want to not only feel appreciated, but also want to feel as if they’re making a difference. Empowering your employees to make decisions when it comes to customer experiences and fixing problems helps them feel as if they play an important role in your dealership. It can actually make a difference and help transform your dealership into one in which they are proud to be a part of.

All of this is easier said than done. People are resistant to change and putting your trust into your employees may be scary as a manager but it shows them that you believe in them and their judgment.

If you want your employees to be loyal to you, you have to be loyal to them.

Frequent travelers have many choices when choosing airlines. Some choose an airline for their frequent flier benefits; some for their convenient routes or frequent itineraries and some have airlines chosen for them by their companies. For many years, Delta Airlines has been at or near the bottom of almost every survey conducted regarding airline customer service. In fact, they were named one of the worst 15 companies (out of all companies) for customer service by the American Consumer Satisfaction Index. Delta finally decided it wanted to change. How could they transform their reputation from that of an airline with horrible customer service to the opposite, however? They spent a long time living up to their bad reputation. How could they possibly change that image and regain the trust of travelers?

A recent article tells the story of a Delta employee going above and beyond for a traveler. A story so out of character from their reputation that you’re forced to consider the fact that maybe... just maybe… they’re sincere.

A traveler returning to the U.S. from Paris had accidentally dropped her passport into a mail bin. As she proceeded to freak out thinking she’d be stranded in Paris, while everyone explained that she’d have to wait for the postal officials to open the box, one person listened and assisted her in her time of need. That person just happened to be a Delta employee. The Delta employee personalized the problem and not only helped her get a boarding pass, then through security and safely onto the plane; he made sure that the next day her passport was retrieved and mailed back to her. This was done while also keeping her up to date numerous times throughout the day.

We don’t know whether this is a new strategy that Delta adopted which empowers employees to go above and beyond or not. However, if it’s not, the positive attention it got them should make them take notice.

Car dealerships typically start with a bad reputation in a shopper’s mind. If the customer is unfamiliar with your dealership, statistically they just assume the dealership can’t be trusted. In fact, a Gallup survey done at the end of 2012 placed consumer trust in car salespeople right below that of Congress. In fact, car salespeople have been at the bottom of the list every year except 2011, when they tied members of Congress with a 7% honesty rating. Car salespeople's perceived honesty has never climbed out of the single-digit range in the history of the list.

Reputation management is certainly something that’s top-of-mind for most dealerships today. Cultivating and nurturing existing relationships towards a public display of affection (positive review) is still challenging to manage but with consumers being more tech savvy all the time, it’s getting easier. Of course, the opposite is also true. Consumers will much more quickly take out their frustration online concerning a poor experience at a dealership than they used to.

So how can a business maintain customer satisfaction (if they have earned it already) or rebuild the customer’s trust (if they haven’t)?

It’s important to teach your employees that every action they take is one that is a reflection of your business and set forth expectations that you have for them as brand ambassadors. Empower your employees to make judgment calls and take action to avoid a negative customer experience and reward them when appropriate.

Car dealerships start at the bottom of the hill and must make huge efforts on a daily basis to climb towards a solid reputation. Every misstep is magnified tenfold as a customer is more inclined to believe something that reinforces the stereotype. So it’s even more important for car dealerships to go above and beyond for their customers and make every possible effort to insure a positive customer experience for every customer, every time.

Delta still has a long road ahead to transform from an airline that lives at the bottom of the customer satisfaction chart to the top. But by encouraging and allowing its employees to make decisions like this, they’re taking a step in the right direction.

Manufacturers are increasingly introducing programs designed to increase brand loyalty, and car buyers are staying more loyal than ever before. One of the most recent examples is GM’s decision to expand its free scheduled maintenance programs to more of its vehicles including most 2014 Chevrolet, Buick and GMC vehicles.

Many dealers have offered a few free scheduled services to their sales customers in an effort to not only introduce them to their service department, but to keep them coming back. With manufacturers focusing more on retention and shifting towards offering free scheduled maintenance for new car buyers, this offers dealerships greater opportunity than ever before to build a customer relationship with a car buyer (whether that car was bought from them or a competing dealer). This can not only increase up-sell opportunities, but also increase their chances at future vehicle sales.

Dealerships who have an OEM customer retention program need to recognize that this is a golden opportunity for them to really focus on “WOWing” the customer as, at this point, a customer has no concerns about price (the service is free to them). It’s all about the customer experience. Provide a great customer experience and they will continue to come back after their free maintenance benefit expires. Treat them poorly and they will take their vehicle to your competitor.

Cadillac has offered a 4-year, 50,000 mile free scheduled maintenance program for a while. Even with car buyers keeping their cars longer (58 month average in 2012), dealerships will still have the opportunity to impress and win the loyalty of the consumer for most of their time of ownership. If done properly in combination with the OEM’s brand retention strategies, a dealership can greatly increase their chances of converting that long-time service customer into a new car sale that then converts back into a service customer.

This “circle of life” could continue indefinitely as long as both the brand and your dealership focus on providing customers with programs that are designed to maintain the customer’s brand and dealership loyalty. As length of ownership continues to increase, fixed operations revenue becomes more important than it ever has been in the past. Leverage your OEMs brand initiatives to support your own dealership retention strategies and you can set yourself up to earn more lifetime customers.

The reason OEMs see the wisdom in using such maintenance programs is to sell more vehicles and importantly keep those buyers loyal to their GM dealer.  One might conclude then that this trend erases any market need for third-party prepaid maintenance (PPM) programs. After all, PPMs are substantially the same as those OEMs offer.

Given this, are factories’ free maintenance programs making third-party PPMs unnecessary?

On the contrary, they are now more vital than ever. The first automotive loyalty programs were utilized by dealers in 2002. Now, more than half of all the US dealerships employ some type of loyalty initiative (many through OEM sponsored programs).  But what about the dealerships with multiple brands where the OEM programs could do more harm to the remaining dealer brand than the good they provide to the other?  Multi-brand dealership groups need a solution that will allow cross-selling and plan redemption between all of their brands. OEMs simply can’t provide this type of solution, nor are they expected to.  Think of the brand Starwood Hotels and Resorts. We all know them as The Westin, Sheraton, The W, Le Meridian and others. Starwood wants to encourage their loyalty members to utilize all of their different brands but under one common moniker. Dealership groups that have multiple brands can benefit from this practice, and they will start realizing the benefits it provides to them in cross-brand marketing, (not to mention the vast amount of customer purchase data and analytics it provides).

With a third-party PPM program, a dealer extends maintenance services at a discount price (some dealers choose to give them complimentary to purchasers). Consider that for GM, late-year buyers of its 2013 models won’t receive free factory maintenance. A dealer offering a PPM program can bridge that gap.

Furthermore, only PPM programs enable dealers to:

• Offer similar maintenance incentives to customers who purchase or lease a model year not covered by the factory program.
• Offer these conveniences – and gain their retention value – to purchasers of other makes it sells from its used vehicle inventory.
• Capture bought-elsewhere and other-make customers who visit the dealership service department.
• Offer these advantages to customers of other franchises in its group whose OEMs do not offer free maintenance.
• Offer customers prepaid maintenance after the duration of the OEM program to further retain them. 

“The British are coming” shouted Paul Revere in his famous midnight ride frantically trying to warn colonists of the impending attacks by England.

Did you know that statistically only 4 in 10 people cared about this news? Only 40% of colonists supported the revolution, with some historians even estimating support in the 20-30% range. The other 60% were either loyal to the Crown or wanted nothing to do with picking sides. Winston Churchill once said, “History is written by the victors.” If you were to take a history class in England, you would be taught a whole new perspective on the outcome of the Revolutionary War. Their viewpoint is, at a very basic level, that they let us win.

With the celebration of our Independence only a couple of days away, we celebrate everything that the United States embodies: freedom, choice and opportunity. Even after the war was “won” in 1783, many didn’t know what to think. People weren’t sure if they were just trading one government for an equally bad one. Not until 1787, four years later, was the Constitution signed, and it didn’t go into effect until 1789 when it was ratified by eleven states.

Today, of course, the United States enjoys patriotism and loyalty from many and was found to be the most desired place in the world to live when Gallup polled foreigners who desired to relocate.

So how did this country, which began with a rebellion that had the support of less than half its residents transform itself into the country that today enjoys some of the most loyal people in the world?

It all began with a promise. The basic principle of that promise was the freedom of choice. Think about it. In the Bill of Rights, all 10 amendments have to do with personal freedom and restriction of government to impose on that. For over 200 years, America has kept that promise and become a place that people want to live.

Businesses themselves may or may not exist if it weren’t for the promises that were made and kept in the centuries that have passed.

Just like the loyalty our country has earned from us, customer loyalty begins with a promise.  As a business, your dealership needs to define that promise and then keep it… no matter what. You must make that promise as unbreakable as the Constitution and show your customers through your actions that there are no exceptions.

Do this and you will not only earn their loyalty, you will become a place others want to do business with as well.

In the automotive world, the bottom line is that many dealerships experience very high turnover rates with employees, especially in sales. Our world is one of high stress, long hours and feast or famine. (This might not be as true in the service departments.) However, the face of your dealership to a customer who bought their car from you is their salesperson. Yes, it is. The person that sold them their car is their go-to person for everything. If there is a problem, they usually don’t call service, they call the salesperson.

So, assuming that’s the case, if your dealership experiences high turnover in sales, how can you expect a customer to be loyal to you when they feel as if they’ve been abandoned? I like to refer to them as “orphan owners”. People have an emotional need to connect. They can’t connect with your billboard or giant inflatable gorilla. They certainly can’t connect with the mysterious shadow-figures sitting behind the desks in the sales tower that they never see. Their connection is with their car and the common bond between their car and your dealership is their salesperson.

I’ve talked to many people who have purchased vehicles from dealerships over the years and, in many cases, the customers go into the relationship already thinking that their salesperson won’t be around for long. No matter how much reassurance a salesperson gives them, they typically have little confidence that, when they need him or her, they’ll be there for them.

The fact remains that your employee retention has a direct effect on your dealership’s customer retention. If your salesperson did their job well and provided a great buying experience for that customer, it creates a feeling of obligation and reciprocity between the customer and that salesperson. Mind you that I never once said this customer bond was between them and the dealership. Emotional connections are made between people. In many cases, the only human a customer could connect with is their salesperson.

So, what do we do about this? Well, the obvious answer is to build a better workplace environment. Create an environment that people want to work at and enjoy coming to. Treat your employees well and understand that they have lives outside of work and respect that. I understand that, no matter how “above and beyond” you go, turnover is inevitable so…

Make sure that sales customers, during and after the sales process, have multiple interactions with people other than just the one salesperson.  Have the Sales Managers, General Manager, Service Director and anybody else that can take a moment, actually meet and talk to these customers in person– not just come over, say hello, thank them for their business and then walk away – but interact in some way. This simple technique increases the number of people in your store that a customer has the opportunity to bond with. It also decreases the chance that a customer would ever feel “orphaned.”

If the customer didn’t buy their vehicle from your store but only service it there, the same principle should be followed. Make sure that the customer is introduced to as many of the advisors as possible including the Service Manager. Once the emotional connection is created and the customer believes that you care, the customer is not bringing their business to your business, they’re bringing it to the people at your business. We all know that people do business with people, especially ones that they like. Make sure that your customers like your people. The more of them they like, the easier customer retention becomes. 

By creating more emotional connections between people in your store and your customer during the first transaction, you will decrease the likelihood that the loss of a salesperson could influence the loyalty a customer feels towards your store. These early stages of relationship building with customers are vital, and it is worthwhile to do everything in your power to build that relationship as quickly as possible.

When your customers start referring their friends to you by beginning with the phrase, “ I have a friend that works at Bob’s Dodge…” not only have you gained a friend, you’ve also gained a loyal customer and brand advocate.

As social media gets more and more entrenched in our daily lives, it’s becoming the easiest and most visible place for one of the most important things your company can have but can’t buy – word-of-mouth marketing.

You can have your customer experience down pat, a loyalty program that rocks and customers lined up to do business with you; but does that mean you’re leveraging everything you can?

Many social media sites like Facebook, Foursquare, and Yelp have some sort of “deal” type feature. What would happen if you take advantage of this feature and tie it in to your existing loyalty program?

Here are some things you may or may not know about these deal features. (I’m going to focus on Facebook since it has the most advantages, in my opinion.) There have been many studies that have concluded that 60% of people “Like” a business’s Facebook page for special offers and deals. Facebook has two features: check-in deals and offers. I’m going to explain how check-in deals can benefit your dealership since this feature is free and easy to maintain.

When you have a Facebook check-in deal running, a customer would go to Facebook and “check-in” using their mobile device to your dealership. When they do this, it shares with their entire network that they are at your dealership. That’s great exposure! It gets better however. If you have a check-in deal, and the customer checks-in and claims the deal, not only does it share it with their network, it will share that 1) they are at your dealership 2) they claimed a deal and 3) the specifics of the deal, quantity remaining and deal expiration date. The best part about this is that these posts to their walls go into their friend’s news feeds and cannot be hidden!

Here’s an example of what one looked like after it was claimed:

Imagine if your “deal” was tied to your loyalty program. What would that look like?

Let’s say you give “points” for each dollar spent at your store towards your customer’s loyalty account. At some point you’ve placed a value on these points. How much would this advertisement, which, in reality is word-of-mouth advertising to your customer’s entire social network, be worth?

Instead of the check-in deal being “20% off any order,” it could be “1,000 loyalty program bonus points” with a check-in. Of course, you could disclaim it as a one time offer per loyalty member or one per customer per day and include that the check-in must correspond with a purchase to avoid people simply stopping by to claim their free loyalty points without spending any money. However, even they just stopped by, wouldn’t that endorsement to their entire network be worth something to you?

If you could get every one of your customers to recommend your dealership to their friends, you would. You certainly try all the time. You ask for referrals. You might even incentivize current customer for bringing you new ones.

Word-of-mouth advertising is still one of the most powerful forms of marketing in existence. The fact remains that it’s continuing to shift online all the time. Leveraging some of these social sites to increase the visibility of your loyalty program by incentivizing your customer for “checking-in” and sharing their endorsement of your dealership with their entire social networks is worth its weight in gold.

You couldn’t pay for better marketing.

[Note: Facebook is merging its "check-in deals" with it's "Offers" product as of July 1, 2013. It is still free but allows for more flexibility in creating different types of promotions. You can read more here [LINK])

The whole idea of a loyalty program is to encourage and reward customers for doing business with you. The easier you make it for them to earn rewards and the more desirable those rewards are, the more likely a customer will utilize your program by returning to your business. How many supermarket “loyalty” cards do you have? Most people have one for each grocery store they go to, both regularly or occasionally. Is that proving loyalty? No, it’s a customer using the loyalty card only because they happened to choose that grocery store on that day.

So, how do you make your loyalty program meaningful? A program where the customer chooses your business every time, not just when they were going to anyways?

An interesting study by two consumer researchers resulted in a concept they named the “Endowed Progress Effect”. In essence, the “Endowed Progress Effect [is a phenomenon], in which people who are endowed with progress toward a goal increase the effort that they exert in reaching that goal.”

One of the studies conducted by these researchers was at a local car wash. One day they handed out 300 loyalty punch cards. Half of the punch cards required the purchase of 10 car washes to receive one free. However, these cards came with 2 of the 10 car washes already stamped with special stamps, which they explained to the customers, was part of a promotion they were running that day, so they only really had 8 car washes to go to get one free. The other half of the cards required the customer to purchase 8 car washes to receive one free. The fact is that both cards really had the same offer; buy 8 car washes, get one free. Half of the customers received what they perceived to be a head start, however.

Over the course of 9 months, the researchers tracked the purchases and use of these punch cards with the owners affixing dated stamps to cards whenever presented by customers.

The results? The customers that were given the cards that had no “head start” converted – meaning they satisfied the requisite 8 purchases and redeemed the card for the free car wash - at a rate of 19%. The customers that were given cards that had a 2-stamp head start (but still needed to purchase the same number of car washes) converted at a rate of 34%! That’s almost double!

It became clear that the customers with perceived progress in the beginning were statistically more apt to complete the program to earn the free wash. They also wanted to see if there was more effort put into the achievement. Those with the 2-stamp head start cards had on average 2.9 days less between visits which decreased an average of ½ a day after each additional visit.

What does this mean? Not only did giving the customer the illusion of progress from the start almost double the success rate of the promotion, those customers made more of an effort to achieve the goal faster.

After reading about these findings, you might want to consider incorporating this practice into your existing loyalty program or, if you don’t have one yet, using this to your advantage once you get one.

The bottom line is that the car wash never gave any special treatment to any of those 300 people. They were all required to buy 8 car washes in order to receive a free one. It’s all about a perceived advantage and is an interesting concept that can be used to maximize the value and use of any loyalty program. It could help to create a loyalty program people make an effort to use, not one they use only when it’s convenient.

I recently read an article about a recent Forrester Report titled “Banks and Retailers: You Cannot Price Your Way Out of Bad Customer Experiences.” It was quite fascinating but there was one part that really resonated with me.

In every instance, when a customer is making a decision on whether to be loyal to your business or not, any question they ask themselves can be boiled down to one simple question.

“Is this company making my life easier or harder?”

If the answer to that question is “easier”, they’ll continue to do business with you. If not, they will start looking for your replacement.

We are constantly analyzing data to try to solve the formula for customer retention. We’ve asked many questions and had many different results. However, boiling the overall question down into something that simple is something a manager can intuitively understand and apply.

Sure, there are still a lot of process changes, analysis, employee reviews and customer surveying to be done. However, if all of this is done with the goal of making the customer answer that your company is making their life easier, you’re already ahead of the game.

The Forrester report mentions that companies can no longer compete with each other on price. This is because, in the age of technology, consumers have access to real-time alternative pricing while standing in your store.  While not completely discounting the power of low prices (it works for Wal-Mart, right?), car dealers don’t have 20,000 products on shelves and stay open 24 hours per day. Even if you did, a low price may win you customers, but it won’t win you loyalty. If your customer is only your customer because you have the best price, then they will only be your customer until a better price comes along.

The report instead recommends that businesses compete for business based on experience, not just price. Of course your prices need to be competitive but they don’t have to be the lowest to win loyalty. That being said, the customer experience you offer better justify your prices and, ultimately, make the customer leave feeling as if you’ve made their life easier.

We’re fortunate that we have technology available in our industry to help facilitate better customer experiences. Many dealers go out of their way to ensure that the customer experience is top-notch, done quickly and provide every convenience possible for the customer. Dealers are constantly working on ways to quantify and stop (or reverse) defection, reward loyal customers through loyalty programs, and incentivize employees for great customer service. And all of this is while trying to win new customers through marketing efforts, word-of-mouth or new sales customers.

Just keep in mind that, consciously or not, the customer is asking: “Is this company giving me what I need, on fair or great terms, and making the interaction easy and enjoyable?”

Help the customer answer yes to that question every time, and you’ll have a loyal customer.