What Is The Key To Customer Loyalty?

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This is the one question that every business owner, who faces competition has asked at one point or the other.

Here’s what I have discovered – The key to creating Loyal Customers is CONSISTENCY. Consistency involves providing predictable, reliable services to the customers every time they interact with your brand

A customer who patronizes your business the first time usually does so because they developed an interest in your product/services. After the first visit, the customer forms an impression of the organization – if that impression was good, they may patronize a second time because they expect to get an experience similar to the first.

If they get a good experience the second time and come back for a third, then you can be sure that’s because they expect a certain level of consistency in the standard of products/services you render.

The impression formed during the 1st visit is important (read: Make A Great First Impression, It Matters) as it sets the tone of the entire customer experience, subsequent visits either confirm or debunk that level of consistency the customer has come to expect of your brand.

According to author Michael LeBoeuf in his book  How to win customers & keep them for life, the key to creating Customer Loyalty is –

  • Doing What You Say You Will Do
  • Doing It When You Say You’ll Do It
  • Getting It Right The First Time
  • Getting It Done Fast

While this is guaranteed to deliver great experiences, inconsistency in delivery would simply backfire. Being able to consistently reproduce a particular service standard is very important in creating Customer loyalty, as consistency builds the customer’s confidence in the brand.

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As customer service expert Shep Hyken put’s it in his post about consistency – “Confidence comes when the customer knows what to expect, and gets it every time.  Their experience becomes predictable”

Consistency is a key quality that every business must-have, a business whose customers cannot rely on its products or services cannot have loyal customers. Most of us visit the same coffee shop every week because we know their coffee is always great and the service is good and we know what to expect on the menu, but whenever they start to fall short of these expectations we become dissatisfied.

Customers must be confident in the quality of your products and the standard of your service, and expect the same over-and-over again, whenever they interact with your brand, that is the key to building loyalty.

 

Kelechi Okeke
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