The Psychology of Customer Loyalty and the Imperative to Sustain Service Standards

Why are customers loyal? Based on my analysis of my experiences as a consumer of goods and services, it all boils down to customer experience.

One makes an emotional connection with a brand based on one’s memories of it. For instance, someone turned off by an uncouth service representative, or lousy offerings from a certain company will take some convincing to come back to try its new offerings.

Whereas an analysis of the Ayala brand for instance, will reveal that customers keep coming back to explore new service and product offerings because they associate the brand with pleasant emotions, in general, in their dealings with the company and its subsidiaries.

Notice that while Ayala Land, specifically, has succeeded in breaking new ground in various socioeconomic segments of the domestic market, some of these customers are the progeny of first generation clients. Association with the company is being passed down from generation to generation because customers had a satisfactory experience being part of an Ayala community. Another marketing byproduct of such is “word of mouth marketing”, in which satisfied customers pass on anecdotes of their satisfactory experience, and make recommendations based on their experience to their network of friends and family.

Thus, if excellent service standards are sustained, the company is assured of a captive market that can be expected to grow exponentially every year, and maximize its leverage on its “brand equity” or the value of the company brand that can be converted to tangible profit and assets.

What do we mean by “excellent”? By this we mean standards in which customer expectations are adeptly managed perhaps best executed through the concept of “under-promise and over-deliver”.  That is, representatives give committal, but minimal expectations, then exceeding them come delivery time.

It means knowing your customers by name, knowing their quirks by heart, and working to meet their specific needs to the fullest extent that the delivery system will allow. It means the little things, like knowing their particular concerns the last time they transacted with the company, helping out where one can. It means providing a cup of coffee or a glass of juice to a client who waited an hour to see you. It means making them feel you value their business as individuals, rather than as a statistic or a code number.

Simply put, it means personalizing service while adhering to high levels of professionalism, and putting the human touch to each transaction, for it is these small memories that add up to the positive emotional connections established with clients that engender their loyalty.