Why do we ignore what we know to be true?

Have you ever heard the saying – “the customer is always right”? Of course, we all have.

Did you know that it’s at least 5 times less expensive to keep an existing customer than it is to gain a new one?  I’m willing to guess most of have heard this or a similar statistic.  Inherently, we know these, and a million other similar statements to be true.  Then why is it that most companies place so little emphasis on maintaining the loyalty of current customers?

I believe the biggest reasons is:

• Management believes customer centric activities are unquantifiable, expensive, long term initiatives without clear ROI.

What would you say, if I told you that it is quantifiable, it’s not expensive (almost free, in fact) and that in most cases you can see the results within a year?   The foundation to the solution is understanding the relationship between customer satisfaction and loyalty. 

Here are a few clarifications regarding this relationship.

• The correlation between customer satisfaction and loyalty is very small, in most cases not worth pursuing.
• Loyalty is more often than not, an emotional response.
• Loyalty occurs when the customer becomes emotionally attached to the brand.
• Emotions occur when a customer’s experience is beyond their expectation.
• Loyalty is thereby created when a customer’s expectations are exceeded.

Are you surprised? 

Probably not.  All of these statements are probably common sense to most people, especially if you’re in the customer service field.

Then, why don’t we simply work to provide our customers more than they expect?

Have you hugged a customer today? 

(especially if they don’t expect it)