Before you answer the question, ‘What does a customer really want?’ Consider a broader question, ‘What is your definition of a customer?’ Although organizations deal with many types of customers, the definition should include two important components:

• A customer is someone who wants or needs your help, your service or your product, and is willing to pay for it.
• A customer is someone with whom your organization is attempting to create a unique and emotionally positive experience for which they will repeatedly purchase your product or service.

By defining your customer it becomes much easier to identify what your customer really wants. Above all, a customer wants a hassle free experience as well as to be individually recognized and treated with respect. Research shows that 96% of customers who are not treated with respect decide to never go back. Typically, customers will not complain because complaining just adds to the hassle of an already bad experience. Six out of ten customers will never return to an organization based on poor service … not poor products. They usually will not register a complaint with the organization; they just go elsewhere. Customers want a positive experience and want to deal with a service provider that has empathy and understands how they feel. They want a service provider who creates strong points of connection. A powerful point of connection creates a bond with customers and ensures a high level of trust. Trust builds strong relationships and a strong relationship ultimately creates customer loyalty. Also keep in mind trust is what your customer wants.

There are many requirements to building a successful and sustainable business:

• The ability to manage the organization effectively
• The ability to create financial growth
• The ability to innovate
• The ability to develop and sustain a loyal customer base
• The ability to make environmentally sound decisions.

When these five components are working in sync, an organization will experience sustainable success.

We know that loyal customers will always return to purchase your products or services, which creates a long-term stream of income. A satisfied customer who has had an average experience may or may not come back, therefore, creating a one time sales or revenue opportunity. Loyal customers always come back; whether it is once a week to their local grocery store or drycleaner, or monthly to their local pharmacy, or every April at tax time to the same accounting professional. No matter the business or industry, creating multiple, and consistent revenue opportunities has a very positive financial effect on the organization.

Additional advantages of developing a loyal customer base include their willingness to pay more for your product or service, and they are also more forgiving when your organization makes a mistake. As loyal customers, they trust your organization and have faith that you are fair. It is truly all about building relationships through trust and strong points of connection. Making the strategic decision to create a loyal customer base is one of the most important commitments you can make to the success of your organization.

Tammy A.S. Kohl is President of Resource Associates Corporation. For over 30 years, RAC has specialized in helping businesses achieve sustainable results through management consulting, strategic planning, leadership development, executive coaching and youth leadership. For information on creating a leadership succession plan visit www.resourceassociatescorp.com or contact RAC directly at 800.799.6227.

The value you provide to your customers is always compared to the value your competitors provide: therefore, value is your customers’ perception relative to similar products or services in the marketplace—your competitors.

Perceived value occurs at the intersection of what customers want and what they get from you versus what they could get from your competition. You can only sustain customer loyalty by continually meeting your customers’ product/service qualifications, specifications, or expectations. You also need to meet their needs in the order that customers deem important while maintaining a favorable comparison between you and your competition. In your marketplace, your competitors are the alternative suppliers your customers use to form their comparative value perceptions. How would your customer define perceived value?

For example if your customers expect your product to perform error free, to be delivered on time, to be supported by timely and personal technical support, and to be properly billed at a fair price, you must be good in all categories to get an “A,” and you must be at least as good as your competitors. If you deliver a product that meets all of their design specifications but are unable to provide personal technical support, you failed in meeting an important criteria; therefore, the perceived value will decrease. For every mark you miss, the value as defined by your customers decreases and you slowly lose the ability to develop a loyal customer relationship. To create and sustain loyal customers it is necessary to consider every contact with each customer as an opportunity for you to provide value—every time. Every service point is critical and every service point has a level of expectation from the customer that must be understood and managed. We call these contact points—points of connection.

Every point of connection gives your organization the opportunity to emotionally connect with your customers. Your customers will judge your value and their emotional tie at every point. Developing and implementing a strategy of creating a consistent emotional connection with your customer creates value, which creates loyal customer relationships.

We know that loyal customers will always return to purchase your product or service, which create a long-term stream of revenue. Another advantage of loyal customers is that they will consistently boast about your product or service creating the most effective and least expensive form of advertising for your organization. Additional advantages of developing a loyal customer base is their willingness to pay more for your product or service, and they are also more forgiving when your organization makes a mistake. Why? As loyal customers, they trust your organization and have faith that you are fair.

Making the strategic decision to create a loyal customer base is one of the most important commitments you can make to the success of your organization. Your individual contribution is also a large part of that success.

Tammy A.S. Kohl is President of Resource Associates Corporation. For over 30 years, RAC has specialized in business and management consulting, strategic planning, leadership development, executive coaching, and youth leadership. For more information visit www.resourceassociatescorp.com or contact RAC directly at 800.799.6227.

After my early gym routine this morning, I had a window of time to run across the street to the grocery store. It was approximately 7:20 a.m. and my goal was to pick up some necessities for the week. Based on how the store is laid out, my first stop was the deli. As I waited, because there was no one currently staffing the deli, I observed five staff members in the bakery, the produce section, and the floral department taking inventory, stocking produce, rearranging displays, and discussing certain NFL teams and their playoff status based on yesterday’s games. As I stood there patiently waiting to be helped, none of the five folks who could physically see me thought it important to go find someone to fill my deli order. Their priority was stocking and rearranging. After about five minutes a young lady appeared. She did not say good morning, Happy New Year, or make eye contact. She proceeded to put on her sanitary gloves and asked, “What can I get for you?” She filled my order and sent me on my way with a thank you.

The essence of customer loyalty is all about the points of connection—every single touch point your employees have with every customer. In my seven-minute deli experience there were at least 15 points of connection that were missed or poorly executed. Five staff members watched me wait in front of the deli counter and none of them took the time to acknowledge my existence or offer to find someone to assist me. In my opinion, this earns double demerits because they could clearly see I wanted something from the deli and did nothing about it. (10 points of connection missed). The lady working in the floral area took the time to talk with a bread vendor in lieu of offering assistance (1 point missed).

When the young deli worker appeared there was no eye contact and there was no greeting (2 points missed). Her attitude was lackluster at best. She really did not appear pleased to be at work serving a customer (1 point missed). As she was completing my order another customer appeared and her opening line was “What can I get for you?” with no additional pleasantries (another point missed).

Points of connection define the customer experience and determine how a customer rates their service and how they ultimately rate your business. Your business is dead without customers. Adopting customer loyalty as a management strategy is critical to the success of business and industry in our ever-growing service environment. If you want to make a significant difference in the results of your business for 2010, I would strongly encourage you look how customer loyalty is defined in your organization. I am confident that the five staff people watching me wait for assistance are not bad employees and they were genuinely “doing their job.” However, I am also confident store management does not embrace customer loyalty practices or my early morning shopping experience would have been quite different. Unfortunately, my experience with the deli that morning is not my first.

Why do I continue to shop there? It is the closest store to my home and office. However, next closest store is only about 3 miles further and I have decided to break my habit and investigate the other store. If their services prove to be better my current store will lose a 5-year, weekly customer. By my conservative calculations that nets approximately $20,800 worth of business.

Take a serious look at your organization’s customer loyalty standards, practices, and measurements. No business in today’s ever changing economic world can afford to lose a customer because of non-existent or inappropriate points of connection.

Tammy A.S. Kohl is President of Resource Associates Corporation. For over 30 years, RAC has specialized in business and management consulting, strategic planning, leadership development, executive coaching, and youth leadership. For more information visit www.resourceassociatescorp.com or contact RAC directly at 800.799.6227.

In today’s ever changing service arena the key to winning customers has nothing to do with price or even product. It’s emotional connection. In the past measuring customer loyalty was a challenge mostly because organizations didn’t understand loyalty. We now know that loyalty is tied to consistent and positive points of connection. Because emotions are perceived as soft, messy, and hard to deal with, emotions make many organizations nervous. Organizations can’t ignore this critical ingredient anymore because the emotional connection with a customer is the basis for creating and building customer relationships.

How can we measure the emotional effect on loyalty? The Gallup Organization suggests using measurements that assess things such as overall brand loyalty, confidence, integrity, pride and passion for the brand. The brand can be the company’s name, its products or services, its people, its policies, etc. Although many of these areas refer to the products or services, connecting with a service provider has a huge impact on the customer’s perception of the brand.

If you want to find out who your loyal customers are, find out how likely they are to recommend your organization to someone else. Remember, one of the key measurements of loyal customers is their desire to recommend your organization. There is a direct and strategic correlation between an organization’s revenue growth and its customer loyalty score.

How does your organization’s measure customer loyalty score?

The emotional state of your service provider will always influence the outcome of the service interaction, and emotionally positive points of connection are the best predictor of Customer Loyalty. Have you ever thought about the criteria your customers use to evaluate positive service interactions with your organization? According to Zeithaml, Parasuraman, and Berry from their book, Delivering Quality Service, there are five key areas Customers use to evaluate service.

Reliability. Can Customers depend on the organization to accurately and dependably provide service to them?

Assurance. Do the service providers convey confidence about their product or the service, and do the Customers trust the service provider?

Tangibles. This deals specifically with the appearance of the service area, the store, the lobby etc., and the appearance of the customer service provider. Is the environment pleasing and appropriate, and is the service provider dressed appropriately, smiling, warm and genuinely open? If interacting with customers via the phone obviously smiling, tone of voice, and listening intently will create positive points of connection with Customers.

Empathy. This is the strongest skill that demonstrates if a service provider genuinely cares.

Responsiveness. This involves the ability to provide prompt or timely service, and measure the willingness of the service provider to help Customers.

If points of connections are positive, chances are the Customer will return. If the points of connection really made an impact and provided value to the Customer then there is a much greater chance the person will become a loyal Customer … and loyal Customers positively impact the bottom line!

Do you have processes within your organization that provide you with the ability to monitor and measure every point of connection in your service cycle? If not, start now!