Customer service is your loyalty safety net

Customer loyalty is the customer's trust in your company.

Like anything else trust-based, it can take a long time to build up and only moments to destroy.

The big killer of loyalty is bad customer service. Usually by the time customer service is contacted, something is wrong or the customer is confused. If not handled well, customer loyalty will be damaged (potentially permanently).

I won't get into the specific of customer service. You already know it and have a better understanding of what works for your brand.

I will mention that if you change your perspective, you might look at customer service in a new light. A light that could end up improving your customer loyalty storewide.

Customer service is the last-stop before losing a customer.

If you succeed, loyalty is kept and can even improve.

If you fail, the customer could be lost or even turned into a dissenter that scares away other customers.

From that perspective, customer service is your loyalty safety net. Its goal is to catch customers (and problems) that are at-risk of causing customer defection.

This perspective can also unlock a lot of customer loyalty improvements:

• What if customer service proactively reached out to new customers on a schedule?
• What if they contacted customers who shipments have been delayed?
• What if they acted like account managers for your most loyal VIPs?

At the very least, customer service should not be discarded to the dark room in the back where they have to churn through tickets and close out customer complaints.

Measure the different levels of customer loyalty with Repeat Customer Insights. It uses various models to segment and grade your customers based on their behavior.

Eric Davis