Summary of key points

The following is a summary of the major points made in Customer Loyalty: a guide for time travelers: Customers are placing increasing emphasis on the way they are treated. If you want to keep your customers, you have to make sure they feel impressed with your organization, not just “OK.” There is clear evidence that even in today’s society and market-places which feature a multiplicity of choice, customers do in fact want to be loyal. A service business sells itself and when it does this successfully, it makes friends with its customers. The feelings a service organization should aim to generate in its customers are very akin to what a good friendship delivers— feeling important and individual, a sense of being listened to, knowing who you can trust, and who will have time for a useful chat. Customer thinking runs something like this: if we have found a service brand that we can make friends with, why on earth would we want to shop around? Too many organizations have forgotten—or not bothered to learn—that customers do in fact want to be loyal.