Customer loyalty? No such thing

I saw this article by Don Frischmann in Advertising Age telling "marketers to do more to lock in customer loyalty", and it struck me that "loyal" customers are actually "LAZY" (or possibly just lacking a little motivation). Locking in loyalty is like putting handcuffs on a koala.

Let me explain...

"Loyalty" suggests there is a force that bonds the two parties together based on survival. A Rottweiler is loyal to its master because he doesn't know how to open a can of dog food and he fears the repercussions of killing for its food. The Rottweiler doesn't know there is an alternative life out there without his master, and even if he did, it's probably not worth changing for.

Telling marketers to encourage loyalty is like telling them to find customers that are too lazy to change.

Customers aren't loyal to brands. (And brands certainly aren't loyal to their customers!) They won't see the brand through thick and thin. They just figure that the experience is not too bad and it's not really worth changing. As long as the brand doesn't go out of fashion, or someone doesn't tell them that they can get a better deal somewhere else.

Lack of knowledge and lack of confidence are strong but fickle bonds. It doesn't take too much to break them. "Food doesn't have to be in cans." "You are strong enough to kill your own food." Basically, "Things could be better." So maybe the journalist of this article should be telling marketers to talk to someone else's customers and tell them to ask for more!

But the majority of our customers are like koalas - if we feed them enough eucalyptus leaves, they're not going anywhere. Just don't upset them, don't rip them off and don't give them the confidence to look elsewhere.

Ultimately we don't want all our customers to be koalas - they don't interact with us, they don't give us feedback until we've really upset them and that won't teach us anything. We want customers who ask for more, challenge us and then buy more from us.

Interaction is the key. How do we get a constant dialogue with our customers, and how can we get the ideas from that dialogue built into out product development and customer service channels?

I have recently been working on moving a customer enquiry form from one part of a company website to another. Unbelievably the old process allowed up to 20,000 emails per month to be pinged into the corporation, without tracking, without automated reponses and without any feedback on customer requirements into the business. 20,000 pearls were being cast before swine on a monthly basis, and all the corporation could think of was how much this was costing to service. For most companies, if it comes from the website with a person's name at the end of it, and it's not a lead or an order, then it must be someone else's problem. But that's 20,000 people every month who took the time to find the Contact Us page on your website, and took the trouble to send a coherent request for information - if there's anyone we should be talking it's not koalas, it's these people.