Five Decisions that Drive Customer Loyalty
The following is an excerpt from the book, “I Love You More Than My Dog: Five Decisions that Drive Extreme Customer Loyalty in Good Times and Bad.” The author is Jeanne Bliss, a former chief customer service executive at Coldwell Banker, Allstate, Microsoft and Mazda.
This book is about earning the right to have customers tell your story. When you make decisions that respect ad honor customers, you will earn their admiration; eventually even love. Then customers will begin to grow your business for you.
The title of this book, I Love You More Than My Dog, is a reminder that people are bound by emotion to the things they love. They are bound by emotion to behaviors they love. What binds dog lovers to their pets is the constant devotion they receive from them: a warm welcome, caring nature and selfless actions. All character traits we value in people, especially when we come across them in business.
When customers love you, they’ll not only turn to you when a particular product or service is needed, they’ll turn to you first, regardless of the competition. They will tell your story, forming an army of cheerleaders and publicists urging friends, neighbors, colleagues, even strangers to experience your company. The accolade “I love you more than my dog” is a high aspiration. What customers say about the companies they love gets pretty close to that sentiment. The endpapers of this book are filled with comments made by customers proclaiming their love for companies and the people in them. At Yelp, Facebook, Epinions, Twitter, chat rooms, and hundreds of other Web sites everyday, people are not bashful to tell stories about how they feel when they are treated well. Customers who love you won’t be able to stop raving about you. But you have to earn the right to their story first.
So many companies want to know “How can we get there?”—”How do we achieve a state of being loved that way by customers?” The answer is this: the decision you make will take you there. Making the five decisions in this book will help you to earn the right to have your story told. They will drive the behaviors customers love.
