CUSTOMER LOYALTY
Customer Loyalty is earned when your staff treats your guests like Customer Royalty! All things being equal, if your product is the same as that of your competition, you must excel in service. If your service is about the same as your competitor offers, you must have a superior product in order to compete. And then still you must improve your service to the point that it becomes a focus on Experience! Today, customers expect quality products, personal service and a unique experience!
While it may not be quite so simple to alter your product, management can work on improving service to insure customer loyalty through training. Whether your business demands face-to-face customer communication, phone, email or similar contact, continued education of your personnel is a must when you want increased customer loyalty.
It's far less expensive and time consuming to train staff you already have, rather than to go through a continuous process of trying to find staff who already have all of the skills you seek to garner customer loyalty. And, it's far less expensive to keep the customers you presently have rather than to find new ones. Not that you don't continually strive to gain new customers, but when you please the ones you have, their loyalty will show, with personal recommendations that will in turn help you to gain new customers.
Achieving customer loyalty can be approached in two ways. Training and education of employees to meet and exceed customer expectations is one path to customer loyalty. The second is through administration of Customer Satisfaction Surveys which enable management to ascertain both what individuals and departments excel in their service, where customers feel there is a need for improvement and where being responsive to customer's wants and wishes increases customer loyalty. Ference Leadership and Strategy, together with its metrics division, Center For Survey Research, can help you to reach your goals.