The following is a Best of 360Connext post.
Business leaders often fret over ways to gain and keep customer loyalty, but what about the other way around? Most companies, I’d argue, don’t demonstrate mutual loyalty to their customers. Is this fair? I don’t think so. And most customers don’t, either.
From Twitter:
“Even my local Indian retailer notices I’ve been a loyal customer and gives me bonus stuff, I’ve been with @vodacom since 2007 but..nothing!”
“@emobileireland So I have to pay twice the amount for being a loyal customer?”
That’s right:
These expressions of frustration sum up some of what’s lacking when a company doesn’t practice mutual loyalty.
Why don’t customers deserve loyalty in return for theirs?
- Companies often treat NEW customers better than loyal customers. Deals, discounts, and freebies are all used as lures to get as many customers as possible, and yet then they don’t honor those same deals for their exisiting customers.
- Companies rely on customer apathy and take advantage of it with long-term customers. A while back I wrote about my apathetic relationship with ADT, and just recently we called to compare what a competitor had quoted us for the same service. ADT was quick to lower our bill by $20 per month…but only because we had called. Otherwise, they would have happily continued to raise our rates.
- Companies take publicity stunts too far and insult their current customers. A very good example is what happened with OKCupid earlier this year. To promote their new “Love Is Blind” app, they removed all the photos from their site. Keep in mind, this is a dating site! Photos are a big part of it. Users were upset, so OK Cupid decided to bring the photos back with this message on their Facebook wall:
“Attention shallow people: user photos are back up on OkCupid! Everything is back to normal. Love Is Blind day was a total success. We’ve already had 65,820 blind date requests through the new app.”
Wow. You can’t make this stuff up! Carter Gibson wrote a detailed post about being one of OK Cupid’s users, and how the day was NOT a success for them.
“You’ve got to give loyalty down, if you want loyalty up.” – Donald T. Regan
Is it too much to ask for customers to believe they deserve some loyalty from brands in exchange for their loyalty? I don’t think so. Customers have more power now (and more ways to express it) than ever before, so why not treat them well?
Image Credit: Eric Fischer via Creative Commons
