Hello, Erwin from Customer Service Point calling!

We’ve started this first (experimental, I might add) pod cast of Customer Servings with singer/songwriter Michael Franks, and for good reason… Marjan and I have been longtime fans of Michael Franks, we love his work.

To put it bluntly: whatever he makes, we buy!

So, if fans are loyal customers, how many fans does your business have?

Customer loyalty is notoriously difficult to measure. Even if you do a survey, and –say– 98% turn out to be satisfied customers, what does that mean? That 98% of your customers are loyal to you?

I’m afraid not. In their book “E-service: 24 Ways to Keep Your Customers-When the Competition Is Just a Click Away” Ron Zemke and Tom Connelan have done some research on this. They’ve charted the correlation between the overall customer satisfaction (ranging from unsatisfactory, poor, satisfactory, good to excellent) and the likelihood of repeat business.

Hockey-stick Loyalty

If a customer is satisfied (or should I say: “just” satisfied) this absolutely doesn’t mean that a customer will return. Even a “good” experience increases the likelihood of repeat business only marginally.

The real loyalty only comes with “excellent” experiences. This is the end of the hockey-stick. Only “excellent” experiences turn customers into raving fans.

Just how do you create fans out of customers?

Aha, that’s the $64,000 question, isn’t it?

Well, I can tell you how Michael Franks turned us into fans:

• First off, he provides great value and quality. His music has great tunes and has wonderful lyrics. At least, we think so!

• Secondly, he constantly surprises us! Although he’s generally considered a jazz musician, he experiments with other music influences like South-American music and Pop music, and he has been doing that long before the term “Fusion” was even known.
    
• And, Michael has been making great and surprising music for years and years. His first album dates way back to 1973, and he’s still going strong after more than 3 decades. Having heard nearly all his songs and music, I can really say that he’s never disappointed us.

Now here we are: his loyal fans. Value, quality and surprise (in the positive sense of the word that is) have made us that. If you want to create raving fans for your business, I think that value, quality and surprise should be core values of your customer service and business.

And be prepared to deliver that, year-in, year-out. How’s that for pressure! ;-) Anyway, that’s the point I wanted to make. So tell me, what’s yours?

When Sly Calls (Don't Touch that Phone) © 1983, Michael Franks
Your Secret's Safe with Me © 1985, Michael Franks

Top of Customer Service Core Values