How to Lead Your Way to Customer Loyalty

Today’s post is by Susan Baroncini-Moe, author of Business in Blue Jeans: How to Have a Successful Business on Your Own terms, in Your Own Style (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

There’s no disputing that retaining customers is far more cost-effective to a business than recruiting new ones. But it’s getting harder and harder to develop customer loyalty. On the flip side, some companies seem to be able to get it right from the start. What does it take to create loyalty so strong that your customers keep coming back for more?

The Three E’s

1. Empowered Employees

Your first loyalty is to your employees. Why do they come first? Because your employees are on the front lines. They’re the ones serving your clients and customers directly and they’re the face of your business, representing your brand every single day. If you want your customers to be happy, you’d better make sure your employees are happy. How do you create a happy work force?

Hire Well. You start by hiring well. Hire people who fit into the corporate culture and who will be team players. It’s not just their skill set that matters—skills can be learned. What you can’t teach or train so easily is the soft skills—people skills—and the way people think. Focus on hiring for culture and personality and put people in the right positions where they can succeed, then worry about any additional skills training.

Compensate Well. Make sure your compensation structure is competitive. The first, best way to retain top talent is to offer generous salaries and compensation packages, because employees who aren’t paid well tend to look at their jobs as “just a way to pay the bills,” rather than being truly invested in how well they do their jobs. When employees are paid well, compensated in a variety of ways, and shown appreciation for their efforts, they tend to perform well in their jobs and to care about the results they get for their customers and for their company.

Empower Well. Far too many of the employees who are on the front lines, interacting with your customers are completely powerless and impotent. They can’t do much more than use those canned phrases that customer service agents use, like “I’m so sorry for the problem you are experiencing, [insert name here],” which tends to lead to customers being angry, rather than delighted. Angry customers are never loyal customers, but you can turn an angry customer into a very loyal customer, if you have empowered employees who, rather than passing the buck to the manager or to another department, takes ownership over a problem and stays with the customer until the problem is solved.

Employee empowerment is about more than just customer service, however. When you free your staff to do their jobs more effectively, efficiently, and usefully, they become more engaged and involved in what they do. They feel respected and want to live up to the trust they’ve been given.

Action Item: Assess your corporate culture. Does it attract the best talent and productive employees who fit into the existing culture? Can you free your employees to solve problems and handle challenges more effectively?

2. Engaged Leadership

It’s not just your employees who need to be involved and engaged. Empowerment and involvement are important at every level. The boss who doesn’t visit the ground floor regularly is ignorant of what’s really happening in his or her company. And you need to know what’s going on in your company… at every level. How long since you visited the ground floor of your company? Have you ever spoken to your “front line” workers?

Action Item: Visit the ground floor of your business and talk with your employees. Make such visits a regular part of your routine, and be open to the suggestions and ideas that you hear from those who are on the front lines, representing your brand.

3. Exceptional Customer Experiences

Exceptional customer experiences start with anticipation and standing in the shoes of your customers and clients. Become your own secret shopper and experience every point of contact in your business. Again, this is about engaged leadership. Sure, you can trust this to someone else, but until you’ve experienced it yourself, you’ll never truly know.

Exceptional customer experiences also come in the form of over-delivering. Don’t “under-promise” so that you can over-deliver, though. And if you have to make cutbacks, don’t cut back on service so that you can cut expenses. When you cut service, you tell your customers how little their happiness and satisfaction with your company matters to you. Wrong direction.

Plus, make sure that when a mistake is made, your employees handle the mistakes and the reparation of the mistake with grace and yes, with over-delivery. A mistake is actually a wonderful opportunity for your company to restore a customer’s faith and trust and loyalty in your brand. Make sure your employees know how to admit mistakes, apologize for them, solve them, and go the extra step to repair the damage.

Action Item: Become your own secret shopper and experience each point of customer contact in your business. Stand in the shoes of your customers and clients. Where can you improve the anticipation of their needs? How can you improve the way your employees handle mistakes when they’re made?

Great leadership is the only way that great customer loyalty can happen. It’s up to you to get engaged and involved at every level of your business so that you know exactly what’s happening and can implement new strategies to create happy employees that will ultimately yield very happy customers.

– Susan Baroncini-Moe, author of Business in Blue Jeans: How to Have a Successful Business on Your Own terms, in Your Own Style, is a business and marketing strategist who consults with companies to help them gain visibility, improve the way their businesses are run, and train their staff to implement key marketing strategies. Susan holds a Guinness World Records® title and she and her businesses have been featured in Redbook Magazine, USA Today, MSN Living, American Express Open Forum, Social Media Examiner, Investor’s Business Daily, and Yahoo Finance, as well as many other online and offline publications. You can find Susan on Twitter @suebmoe or at http://businessinbluejeans.com.