Tag Archives: customer development

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Customer Delight Revisited

It wasn’t all that long ago that business journals were all abuzz with the notion of delighting customers. “Creating real loyalty”, they said, “is all about Customer Delight.”

Fast forward to say…now…and delight has been eclipsed. You no longer want to delight customers, now you just want to make things easy for them. Customer Effort is now the thing that creates loyalty.

I’m not sure I agree…well, let’s be honest really…I don’t agree.

Most of what you read in favor of Effort over Delight cites studies that seem to indicate that customers don’t want “something free” they just want customer service to “be easy”. True, but myopic.

Allow me to suggest three truths of Customer Delight that I believe paint a much more colorful picture on a far broader canvas.

1. Delight starts with your product.
A simple truth but oft overlooked. You can delight customers with elegant design, innovative features, good cost to value ration and yes, even ease of use.

Some people refer to this as the “human factor”, creating products and services that don’t just “solve the problem” but bring a sense of happiness, well being, or balance to the user as well.

Obviously Apple is a leader in the art of human factor design. iPhone was SOOOO cool compared to other smart phones when it first hit the market. Even now the competition is more trying to out iPhone the iPhone than they are truly innovating.

2. Delight continues when you go the extra mile.
This is not as difficult as it seems. Simple ways to provide delight in this category:

  • How effective are your assembly instructions?
  • How comprehensive is your user manual?
  • What are your policies on replacement or repair?
  • How easy are they to find?

Providing information that allows customer to answer their own questions, and providing it in detail, has the capacity to delight customers. Yes, it is interesting on how closely this plays to customer effort, but in this case effort CAUSES delight.

My son is now driving my old Nissan Altima. I love that car. But early on I ran into a bit of a confusing problem with it. One morning, out of the blue, it wouldn’t start. I tried a couple times before it finally sputtered to life. Then, for weeks, no more problem.

Until it happened again. I can’t remember if it was cold, or water, or cold water…but there was nothing that made me think there should be a problem. I did a little digging and not only did I discover this was a randomly occurring issue for other Altima owner’s as well but, I ALSO discovered the secret code to fixing it!!

I kid you not you had to do something along the lines of: Turn the key on and off three times, turn it to the on position for 15 seconds, take it all the way out, put it back in and start normally. Apparently this resets something in the computer. Works every time.

What bugged me was that I had to find that out on the internet. I know it would go against Nissan’s grain to admit there might be an intermittent problem but I wish THEY would have had the information available for me.

  3. Delight is about exceeding expectations…sometimes.
There are times when customers expect you to be invisible. They do NOT want to have to get into the weeds on details. Think in terms of your cell phone bill. You’ve set up all the options as you’d like them and now you just want it to run like clockwork.

If the only time you attempt to delight customers is when you’ve failed at invisibility it feels like you’re trying to buy them off.

Find ways to anticipate your customers expectations and be waiting to meet their needs at a point that is down the road ahead of them.

Later this week I want to look at Customer Delight as a multiplier, but for now consider these truths and ask yourself where your best opportunities lay for elegant design, superlative support, and anticipatory solutions.

Where are your best opportunities for delighting customers today? Where would you like them to be tomorrow?

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Customer Effort – Level 2: Customer Service

As I mentioned in my last post Customer Effort, the notion of making things easy for your customer, begins while the customer is still a prospect.

Most of what you’ll read around Customer Effort, and what I want to take a look at today, has to do specifically with customer service…whether that be via the web in a more self service approach or via a call center.

I don’t want to argue the relative merits of Customer Effort score just yet. While it is one of several measurements that can best be used in combination to make some guesses at customer loyalty it is also a risky measurement because it can refer to a specific instance in time rather than an overall experience.

It is also important to remember that customer effort is really applied differently in different industries.

Take a transactional service oriented business like banking, insurance, or utilities. In this case I want my provider to be nearly invisible. I want ANY interaction to be virtually effortless. My expectations for invisibility are quite high.

But now think about purchasing a configured item like a computer, cell phone service, or an automobile. In these instances I expect that my interactions may have a little more substance to them because my requests may start to run in a slightly more personalized vein. I still want the provider to know what I have but I may not have the same high set of expectations when it comes to them anticipating my need.

That being said I think there are several characteristics of any organization that set them up for success when it comes to customer effort.

1. They know me
When I log in to my account on your website, or provide my customer ID to your call center agent, I anticipate that I have just provided all the information you need to quickly call up everything there is to know about my interactions with you.  I should NEVER have to provide more information and I should ABSOLUTELY NEVER have to provide repeat information.

United Airlines is struggling at the moment trying to converge two web systems since their merger with Continental. When you log in to your frequent flyer account it can show you all your currently active reservations but you have to log in AGAIN to view the details of any of them. This is an epic failure.

Once you have my customer ID don’t ask me for my address, my phone number, or the model number of the product I’ve purchased from you unless you’re trying to confirm that I am who I say I am…even then it’s a dicey thing to ask.

2. Front End People are Empowered
I believe that the worst effort experience I have had in recent days came at the hands of AT&T. We were trying to combine my “business” cell phone account with the rest of my families “personal” account.

  • The rep in the store had to get a manager
  • The manager had to call a regional manager
  • The regional manager had to call a different kind of regional manager
  • Regional manager 2 sent it back to the store manager
  • …who had to call yet another type of regional manager

In all it took more than two and a half hours…and the bill still wasn’t right for the next two months.

The problem here was that the front end folks were not empowered to solve the problem. Don’t make your front end people call routers. The more times I have to be switched to another department, manager, or agent the lower you score on customer effort. Give the front end people the authority to think independently and solve the customer issue in one stop.

3. Information is persistent
This really should probably be the first one because it fuels the other two. I list it third because it is more system than process based and thus potentially the easiest to fix.

You can’t empower people to help me if they don’t know me and they can’t know me if they don’t have all the info at their fingertips. Your customers have multiple connections to you, web site, social media, call center, billing…each of those departments capturing information all the time. If you want to know me and empower people to serve me they have to have ALL that info.

How well do you know your customers? How empowered are your people when it comes to creatively serving your customers? Do they have the info they need?

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Customer Effort – A Basic Guide

Over the last decade or so three themes have held sway over the customer experience landscape.

Customer Delight is perhaps the most commonly known. The notion of finding way to provide unexpected delight for customers.

The notion of Net Promoter and Net Promoter Score isn’t far behind. We’ve all been asked how likely it is that we will recommend a product, or service, company to a friend.

The new kid on the block though is the idea of Customer Effort. If you do a Google search on Customer Effort you’ll find a lot of interesting debate. Go ahead, we’ll wait for you.

Now, if you did that what you most likely found is a lot of articles about Customer Effort and Customer Effort Score as they relate to customer service and loyalty. Make no mistake, loyal, repeat customers are what we’re all after and at the end of this series I’ll introduce some different thinking on loyalty, but I think much of what Google turns up on Customer Effort falls short of the mark.

Customer Effort begins as a set of expectations. The customer’s expectations, not yours. You may create a customer service department that is seamless and effortless for customers and that may gain you nothing because it is what they expect all along.

Being as this is intended as a basic guide allow me to suggest several guidelines for applying the concept of customer effort.

1. Effort begins before the customer is a customer.
As I mentioned above most articles seem to focus on customer effort as a measure of customer service, but what good does it do you to make customer service effortless if a customer can’t find you to buy from you in the first place?

In an overall customer effort strategy you should look first to see how easy it is for a potential customer to find you, learn about your product or service, learn what makes you different, and decide to buy from you. I know this sounds like marketing 101 but you’d be surprised how often you can go to a web site…the first place MANY potential customers go to learn about products and services…and learn less than what you need to know to make an informed buying decision.

This piece of the customer effort pie is crucial because it is where the customer begins to establish their expectations about you and your offering.

2. Don’t overlook the FAQ
How often do you go to the web to find out something about a feature of a product, or do some troubleshooting, or learn how others use it only to discover that the best answers come from user groups, bulletin boards, or Yahoo answers?

If the company that sold me the product doesn’t appear in the first three search results I start to wonder how well they know their customers. Just the fact that many of us go to Google before going to a manufacturers or sellers web site speaks volumes to how we perceive their desire to solve our quandaries.

If you want to up the ante on customer effort you should be perusing those bulletin boards, user groups, and yes, even Yahoo answers. Take what you find there and update the FAQ on your own site. The more I know you as the provider of info the easier it is to me to come to you for answers.

Don’t make me search, make we want to come ask you.

3. Not all effortless service is good service
I once had an IT guy ask for some marketing advice on a presentation he was going to give about “significant wins” for the department in the previous quarter. The “wins” were all about performance gains, down time, information access…good techy stuff. I starred at him blankly for a moment then asked, “So where are the wins?”

Everything he had presented as a “win” was something the rest of the organization expected as a matter of course. It would have been the equivalent of Ford or Chevy coming out and saying they had a significant “win” with their new models because the mirrors don’t fly off the side of the car when you go over 60 mph any more?!?

What they had surmised was a win was them barely coming up to general expectations, expectations of which they should have been deeply aware.

Remember that effort starts with expectations. What you think is something easy to take care of your customers may think is something they should have never had to bother with in the first place.

Customer Effort IS crucial when it comes to customer service but it starts well before any service call. Make sure your customers have an easy time dealing with you from the time they first hear your name, through the time they buy, and when they finally find themselves in need of additional service you’ll have set expectations correctly.

Then all you need do is deliver.

What do you think of when you hear the term Customer Effort? What types of conversations might be going on inside your organization around CE score?

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What is Your Customer’s Experience? Take 2.5

The Hotel where I have found myself residing since Monday here in Newcastle, Australia in equipt with what I refer to as the “room power off” feature. If you’ve never experienced it before it is a slotted light switch just inside the door. When you enter the room you insert your card key into the slot and this turns the power on to the room. When you leave you take your key with you, obviously, and the room powers off.

A nice energy saving feature to be sure. Except…

When you power off the room you power off the clock radio. When you power off the clock radio you reset the clock. When you power the room on upon your return the clock radio informatively tells you it is 12:00…12:00…12:00. Nice power saving feature but a hassle to have to reset the clock every time I come in the room.

Lame.

This trip is one of several I have currently booked with United Airlines. When I go to the United web site and log in I am presetned with a list of all my current reservations. I can easily click on the VIEW button next to any of them to see the detailed itinerary. And then…it asks me to log in again.

Lame.

We were wending our way down restaurant row in Newcastle the other night looking for a dining adventure. We found ourselvs attracted to a particular place based on the menu posted out near the sidewalk. As we made our way to the counter where we anticipated placing an order we discoevered that the ONLY menu available was the one posted out by the sidewalk. There was no way, inside the store, to know what was available to eat.

Lame.

Great that you a want to save me money on my room by saving power costs but ridiculous that I have to reset the clock everytime I come in the room

Great that you want to protect my information but ridiculous that you make me log in after you have already shown you know who I am.

Great that you entice me with the menu but ridiculous that you set up your establishment like a drive through without a microphone.

I’ve been working on a paper on customer experience of late which, frustratingly, has put me in a position of looking at the world through customer experience tinted glasses. In the next wouple posts I’ll be looking at the concepts of customer effort and customer delight.  But in the mean time…

What other examples do you have of poor customer experience? 

The real  irony behind all this is that WordPress failed me no less than 5 times in trying to post this…post. If I hadn’t had a series of good experiences with WordPress THIS experience would have really set me off. 

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How to Create Your Corporate Story

Since we’ve already looked at WHY you should have a corporate story and we’ve looked at the elements that make up a good corporate story I thought it might be helpful to those who find themselves stuck in the desert of creative drought to look at how get started creating your corporate story.

Remember we said that this could apply to a company, a team, a small group, or even a family.

I’ve had some interesting conversations with folks around the notion of applying this to family and to me it really speaks to the notion of legacy. How do you want to be remembered? Which is where we start…

Step one in scaling the dunes towards creating your corporate story is to Start at the End.

Imagine your group, whether it be a company of your family, has, for some mysterious reason, been removed from this worlds realm. A group of celebrants have gathered to remember your group fondly, sad that you have left, made curious by the mystery, but gathered in fond remembrance. What do they say?

  • “They really went out of their way for their customers”
  • “They really had some mind-blowingly-creative products.”
  • “They really were an amazingly generous family”
  • “They really knew how to invest in friendships”

You can see how these kinds of statements lead toward a good corporate story. They lend themselves to the kind of short descriptions from which good stories are built. Phrases like: serve customers – anticipate needs,  packaged creativity, ask how we can help, build lasting relationships.

Step two in creating your story is to Make it Personal.
By simply putting a phrase like “We’re the people who…” in front of any of those statements above you start to get a defining point in your story. This is a subtle but important difference.

Growing up my dad never told the three of us boys, “I want you to be well rounded individuals” or “I’d like you to experience a lot of things”, instead he encouraged us to be renaissance men. Try out the feel of that. Compare “I’m someone who is well rounded.” which is a description, to “I am a renaissance man.” which is a definition.

Which leads us to step three. As you’re refining your story Make it Definitive not descriptive.You aren’t looking for acute semantic accuracy here. You’re looking for something that feels like a fit. “I’m well rounded” just feels like a product label description. “I’m a renaissance man” almost sounds like a song title!

  1. So first I’m thinking through what the people gathered in celebration say to describe my group and creating solid phrases from their description.
  2. Next I’m making that into a personal statement.
  3. Then I’m refining that statement so that it is a definition and not a description.

If your family, or company, moved out of the neighborhood tomorrow and for some mysterious reason lost all contact with the neighbors, when they gathered a year from now to remember you what would they say?

 

 

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4 Questions You Should be Asking Your Customers

photo courtesy of bluebetty @ sxc.huI walked into Gart Sports the other day and was greeted by a nice young women who looked like she was probably middle level store management. “Good morning sir. Can we help you find anything today?”

“I think I have it covered”, was my blithe reply.

A few minutes later I was back at the front of the store, on my way out, obviously empty handed. Same woman, same position. “Did you find everything ok sir?”

“Why yes, yes I did. Thank-you”

You see, I had only stopped in there because I really, REALLY had to pee. So, in the end, I didn’t need help finding the bathroom and I DID find it, just fine. The trouble was the nice young lady at the front had politely asked the wrong questions.

Allow me to suggest four questions that are the RIGHT questions. You might not ask these exactly as phrased but these are the question you want to have answered by your customers:

1. What are you trying to accomplish?
I walked into Home Depot this afternoon looking for a couple parts to allow me to use my compressor to blow out our sprinklers. Spring is NOT the time to be blowing out the sprinklers but we had tried to start ours up and run into a couple problems so we thought we might blow them out and start from scratch.

“What are you looking for?” Gets the answer that I am looking for parts. You, as the Home Depot guy, will be able to help me find parts.

“What are you trying to accomplish” Gets an entirely different, much more detailed answer. Home Depot guy now has a chance to provide real service in helping me find the right solution to the right problem.

Customers do this all the time. They come up with a solution in their head and ask for the parts to create THAT solution. “I need a button here” or “I need a widget that does x”. When you ask them what they’re trying to accomplish it opens up whole new avenues for potentially serving them well and providing value.

2. What else can we help you solve?
This again is a subtle twist on the old “Can we help you find anything else?”

Last summer I was in a running store getting a new pair of shoes. As I was getting my shoes and a couple packs of gel I looked around to see if they had any race belts. They didn’t. No biggie. Didn’t really think they would.

“Can we help you find anything else? ”  No, I can see the entire store from here and you don’t have what I’m looking for.

“Can we help you solve anything else? ” Well, I still need a race belt. And right THERE you have a chance to direct me to someplace that carries them thus providing service that will make me want to bring my business back again.

3. How are we doing?
I don’t mean the ol’ chummy, “Hey buddy how we doin’?” I mean “How are we doing at meeting your needs?”

Restaurants are the classic example of coming close on this one. What you typically get is “How is everything tasting this evening?” Well, the food may taste fine but it may have taken WAY to long to get to the table or the service may be sloppy in general or the drink menu may be too limiting, any one of those things may outweigh the taste of the food in terms of whether I’ll be back.

But ask “How are we doing?” and all of those issues are in play. WARNING: Don’t ask this one unless you’re ready to hear the answer.

4. How can we get in touch with you?

You may have to give something in return for a customer’s contact information, newsletter, white paper, coupons, but it is worth it because it gives you the chance to maintain the connection that occurs from the first transaction. You know, the whole bird in the hand worth two in the bush thing…

If a customers is looking to buy from you they’re looking to solve a problem or meet a need. Whether you’re trying to get them to buy shoes, schedule lawn care, or attend your church you need to know what need they’re looking to have met. You need to know if you can help beyond that one need. You need to know how you’re doing at meetings those needs. And you need to know how to get in touch with them again.

What are some other examples of the wrong questions that businesses ask?

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5 Examples of Loyalty Building Activity

Continuing on the theme of building loyal customers I’d like to look at 5 examples of the type of activities that let your customers understand that they are known, valued, and cared for.

 

1. Knowing who they are.
I worked for a VERY short time in the car selling business…hated it. One of the things that REALLY bugged me was that we’d collect all the pertinent customer data, name, address, phone number, etc…and then, if we’d convinced them to purchase a vehicle, they’d go into the finance office where the first thing they were asked to provide was their name, address, and phone number. LAME, LAME, LAME…but I don’t feel strongly about that. pffft

I recently rented a very expensive camera lens for the fourth time from the same vendor who has also, by the way, done maintenance work on a camera body of mine. I have had to provide that basic info every time as though I had never been in their store. If I had another choice to rent from I would give them a try in a heart beat.

2. Knowing what they’ve done with you.
I’m becoming a fan of Discount Tire. Every time I go in the look me up in “the system” and quickly ask something akin to, “Great Mr. Fletcher which car today? The Altima, the Toyota Van, or the MR2?” Last time that was followed with, “Shouldn’t be the Altima, looks like you got a full set six months ago at our Arapahoe store.” (60 miles and six months away in Denver.)

It’s a simple thing but it says, “We know you’ve done business with us in the past, we know what it was, and we value that.”

3. Knowing what they need.
I started my corporate career in B2B eCommerce with Corporate Express.  This was way back in the day when people were still saying the internet might just be a fad. We had customers ordering paper and copier toner cartridges from us on a very regular basis. The info we had made it possible for us to proactively suggest orders.

“Based on the timing of your order history it looks like you may be due for a couple toner cartridges, can we order up a couple for you?”

This is non-intrusive, provides a reminder when someone may be otherwise swamped and says, “hey, can we provide a hand here based on what we know about you?”

4. Creating a sense of belonging.
I’m really surprised that more car dealers don’t do this. When I have had a question about my Nissan Altima or my Toyota MR2 I go online and look for car enthusiast forums. I typically find the answer in a heart beat. If I were one of those companies I would be the one creating the forum.

When I was a product manager at Oracle we found HUGE value in creating and monitoring user groups. We knew what our customers liked and didn’t like and were able to be a part of the conversation and in turn they felt like they had a voice. Create the forum and you get to help guide the conversation.

5. Offering based on knowing.
I received two offers in email today. One from Disney for some children’s films and one from The Fall Frenzy Triathlon reminding me that early bird registration was opening next week AND referencing my age group. Both offers knew me as a past customer but only one knew who I was and added that to the offer. The other, sadly because I am a hug Disney fan, didn’t recognize that my kids, whose data they have, are all much older than that.

What are you doing today to build loyalty amongst your customers, followers, readers?

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3 Strategies for Developing Loyalty by Promoting Your Brand

I do believe that the first rewards program to which I was ever subjected was in Sunday school somewhere around second grade. We knew if we came prepared with our memory verse each week for enough weeks in a row we’d earn the reward. Pencils, stickers, small toys, whatever it was we wanted it.

The trouble was we always forgot about it until Sunday morning. Mom would ask in the car en route to church if we had our verse memorized and the scramble would begin.

This is really no different than the challenge faced by most loyalty programs today. They’re looking for repeat buying behavior but they have to find a way to stay top of mind so that you’re not scrambling to remember your card, or your coupon, or you membership number when you’re already out the door.

Granted a lot of that trouble is solved with electronic record keeping, I don’t think I have used my Block Buster card at the video store in years, but the challenge remains: How do you keep your brand top of mind for your customers in a way that promotes easy loyalty?

Allow me to suggest three strategies for building *brand loyalty:

1. Offer, don’t Overwhelm
Don’t think that just throwing your name out there time after time after time will build loyalty. It WILL build name awareness sure, but it might build annoyance as well.  Customer Loyalty assumes a customer exists and that you’d like them to be loyal, this is different than pure acquisition.

You offer them the opportunity to self-identify and connect, that’s your loyalty card, or your buy 5 and get the sixth free, or your “subscribe to my blog via”. Now they’re bought in. Don’t feel you need to keep throwing your name at them so they’ll remember you. Move to strategy #2

2. Serve, don’t Suffocate
Now that your customers have self identified find opportunities to serve them. That doesn’t mean sending them a 50% off sales flyer every other week. It means providing value that fosters connection.

In the blogosphere Michael Hyatt is a master at this. If you subscribe to Michael’s blog and follow him on Twitter, as I do, you’ll find that he doesn’t inundate with you email updates about new posts. What he DOES do is regularly tweet links to things he believes his subscribers will find valuable. In short he provides a service to his community. He gains credibility in an unobtrusive manner and in that way he stays top of mind because he serves.

3. Analyze, don’t Assume
I’ve mentioned this one before but your long term strategy must be based on understanding your customers behavior. Capture, analyze, test, don’t assume that my return visits automatically mean I am a hug fan of everything your brand entails.

Starbucks is a great example of a company that want’s to tailor your experience based on your behavior. Their Gold Card program helps them understand who you are as a customer and react to you accordingly. It isn’t nine stamps on a paper card to get your tenth coffee free. It’s knowing what you order and when. Their analyzing you as an individual because you have self identified and joined. That analysis helps them make you feel known, valued, and cared for.

Whether you’re a blogger, a coffee shop, an author, or a hotel chain you need to offer, serve and analyze. In doing so you’ll stay top of mind and they’ll remain loyal.

What tactics do you use to keep your brand top of mind for your customers?

*There is no way to build brand loyalty if you have a crappy product or service. That goes without saying, which is why I didn’t say it.

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The Conerstone of Loyalty: Capturing Customer Behavior

I was saddened to learn within the last few weeks that the television show Cheers is not quite the cultural reference it once was. Sam and Diane’s clumsy relational tension, Norm and Cliff pontificating from the corner of the bar, Carla’s cutting wit…it just doesn’t hold the same sway it once did.

That being said I still believe that show’s tag line pretty much sums up the idea of why we need to capture customer behavior:

“You want to go where everybody knows your name”

 

Cheers was one of those bars where the regulars WERE known by name. All they had to do was walk in the door and a glass was pulled up to start provision of their favorite libation. Part of the draw of the show was that we all like that kind of service. We like walking into a place where we’re known and treated like family.

But it’s more than that. If it was JUST knowing someones name it would be easy. The difference comes when you can ask, “So what’ll it be…the usual?” and know what you’re talking about.

I fly United probably more that any other airline because Denver is a hub for them. What if United defaulted to an aisle seat when I booked online because I have proven, over ten years, that that is where I want to sit.

I stay at Hilton properties quite often. What if the Hilton web site picked a king size, non-smoking room as a first choice every time I logged in and looked to make a reservation. They should be WELL acquainted with that choice by now.

And perhaps the craziest of all…Based solely on my direct purchase history with them, Disney SHOULD be able to identify:

  • The names and birth-dates of everyone in my family
  • Our wedding anniversary
  • The time of year we like to travel
  • The number of days we typically visit the parks
  • The extras we like to include in our trips

Data like that is a GOLD MINE. With information like in hand they could tailor enticing offers based on specific data and past behavior. They could actually ask, “Mr. Fletcher will it be the usual this year? A three day stay sometime in October?”  or “Mr. Fletcher would you and your wife like to join us for a cruise this July to celebrate your 22nd anniversary? What about bringing the kids this time? They’re probably a little…Grumpy…you left them out last time. We’d like to offer you a free cabin upgrade so you can bring them along.”

I know, I know, it sounds like it could border on creepy and I do push the boundaries there to make a strong example but the data they should already have on file would make that type of communication incredibly simple.

All of a sudden I’m not just receiving 20% off coupons like everyone else. I’m known by name. I’m not standing in line, pun intended, with a thousands of people who have never had an annual pass. I’m appreciated. I’m not clicking on a blanket email link. I’m getting a specific offer that says : ‘We know you and have something special for YOU because we value you as a customer.’

Let me say that one more time:

  • We know you
  • We value you
  • We have something special for YOU

THAT drives loyalty like nothing else.

What more could you do with the customer data you already have? What other types of data should you be capturing in order to show your customers you know their name, and so much more?

 

 

 

 

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Customer Loyalty Programs: Some Do’s and Dont’s

I knew I had a couple loyalty program cards around somewhere. It turns out this wasn’t even all of them.

Let’s face it everybody has some flavor of loyalty program these days. Almost every last one of them is designed to do the same thing: get you to come back to buy more. Airlines, hotels, grocery stores, restaurant chains, they all have something to offer.  In fact the notion of a loyalty card or membership card is so pervasive we almost take them completely for granted.

So how do you rise above that mess on my desk?

1. Don’t assume: just because they come back doesn’t mean they’re loyal.

Loyalty programs are funny beasties. On the one end you have people who love you and WANT to come back. In the middle you have people who feel they OUGHT to come back, they’re more loyal to attaining the next level than doing business with you specifically. On the far end you have those who feel that they HAVE to come back because that’s where they have all their points.

I confess I’m typically of the ought to variety. Old Chicago’s World Beer Tour is one of the loyalty programs to which I am most loyal. I’ve completed the tour twice and am working on my third trip. But that doesn’t drive me in there any more often. It just makes me mad when I forget to bring my beer card.

DO pay attention to whether your loyalty customers are WANTs, OUGHTs or HAVEs.

2. DON’T forget: Loyalty and Appreciation are close relatives

Most loyalty programs include discounts. I’m becoming less of a fan of discounts because they seem to speak to value. I rather like the Chick-Fil-A approach, if they’re going to give you something they’ll give it to you for free. They aren’t going to comment on the value by discounting.

While discounting does make me feel appreciated as a customer it’s really just price manipulation. I’d rather get “something else”. Maybe it’s a particular set of items only available to members, even the standard “tenth one is free” is ok.

Even better though I’d like you to tailor offerings to how I do business with you. For example, United Airlines should know by now, after hundreds of thousands of miles, that I will do whatever I can to get an aisle seat. What if in knowing that preference they offered me priority aisle seating? Not only would I feel appreciated, I’d feel like they knew me.

DO appreciate your loyalty customers by showing that you know them.

I could go on for quite some time on this topic, and probably will. For now though ask yourself two questions:

1. How do I get my loyalty customers coming back because they love us rather than because they are after the next point level?

2. Do I know my loyalty customers well enough to appreciate them personally?

More to come…

In some industries it cost cost as much as five to ten times as much to get a new customer as it does to keep an old one. What are you doing to keep your old ones? What does loyalty look like in your customer base?