Building Customer Loyalty

No company can succeed if it fails to attract and keep loyal customers. Few companies live up to their potential. A typical company loses 10 to 30% of its customers each year — mostly due to poor service. This touches off a treadmill-like scramble to replace lost customers with new ones. Customer satisfaction is like an election held every day, and customers vote with their feet. If dissatisfied, they walk (sometimes run) to your competitor. When customers cannot realistically switch to another company, they use their feet for something else: they kick back with animosity toward employees. This psychological toll results in high turnover and additional costs to retrain or replace burned-out workers. The skill to meet customer needs makes you valuable to your company. Regardless of job title, organizational position, or experience, some of the most important work you can do is to attract, satisfy, and preserve customers; in short, to build customer loyalty.