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Customer loyalty, the desire for customers to return to your organization instead of your competitors, can be secured with one primary focus: prevent the question mark in their minds. I have taught this for many years to business leaders and customer service reps (also known as CSRs).

I am inspired to write this post on customer loyalty after reading The Primary Fuel of Dissatisfaction by Bob Champagne. He states that fear and uncertainty are the primary fuel of customer dissatisfaction and I wholeheartedly agree.

When you think of the statistics showing that most people are averse to change, it must take strong emotion for customers to overcome their resistance to change and move on to your competitors. People change when the fear of changing is less than the fear of staying the same.

When you create a question mark in your customer’s mind, you give them motivation to change. You increase their fear of staying and run the risk of losing their loyalty!

Prevent the Question Mark for Customer Loyalty

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Build trust.

1. Do you both see and foresee their needs? If not, they question your reliability.
2. What level of knowledge and customer service people-skills do all your employees have? If it is low at the front lines, they question if a competitor can do better?
3. How well and how fast do you recover from product and service problems? Else they will question your commitment and capability.

Deliver the customer’s success.

1. Especially in service businesses, give your expertise, advice, and guidance before giving the customer exactly what they request. Else they will question if a competitor can offer this quality and protection.
2. Stay current. If your business is not keeping pace with your customers’ business changes, they question who else can deliver?

Make it personal, make it easy, make it happen, make it memorable!

People do business with those they like and trust. If they like you yet mistrust your capability and reliability, you lose their loyalty. If you are capable and reliable yet distant or difficult to work with, they question if they can get quality, as well as ease and connection from your competitors.

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Whether you are running a small business or a large sales and service organization, for customer loyalty prevent the question mark.

Action step: Have all your teams review every aspect of product design, sales, and service with one criterion — what could create the question mark in our customers’ minds? Then get to work on erasing those question marks.

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

©2011 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. I appreciate your sharing the link to this post on your social streams. However, if you want to re-post or republish the content of this post, please email info@katenasser.com. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on leading change, employee engagement, teamwork, and delivering the ultimate customer service. She turns interaction obstacles into interpersonal success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.

Tags: CSRs, customer loyalty, Customer Service, deliver, fear, question mark, Resistance to Change, sales, success, Truly memorable, trust, uncertainty