Paul Cherry, Founder
Customer Engagement and Honest Selling equals Customer Loyalty
The idea that customer satisfaction equals customer loyalty is a myth. Customer loyalty in selling relies on customer engagement and honesty. Take a look at the following example.
There is a hardware store in my neighborhood that has been in business for over 50 years. They are not the biggest or least expensive, but they are one of the most successful. Yet, on the surface, they seem to break every rule regarding customer loyalty:
- no sales, no frequent-buyer cards
- no easy credit terms, no free coffee and doughnuts
- dusty shelves, bad parking, opinionated salespeople
Customer Loyalty — Are You Human or Machine?
So why are they successful? Listen to this story. Once, I walked in looking for an extra-long drill bit, and the salesperson all but refused to sell it to me. “What do you want it for?” he asked. To be honest, at first, he was a bit cantankerous and his frankness offended me but I continued on and told him what I “thought” I needed. He then begrudgingly stated, “I could sell it to you… But it’s not gonna work.”
What followed was an honest explanation to why the product I wanted to purchase would not meet my needs. The salesperson did not follow a script. In the end, I purchased a different product that better fit my situation. The hardware store's frank, to-the-point, strongly human approach to selling helped me develop a level of trust that kept me a loyal customer. Honest selling equals customer loyalty.
These days, many salespeople do not practice honest selling. They are polite, efficient and helpful – and utterly anonymous. It’s not their fault; they’ve been trained that way. They sell from a script and never take a chance. You may as well be talking to a robot. Unlike the local hardware store, customer loyalty suffers, there is no real human connection, no level of trust, no degree of true honesty.
Building Customer Loyalty — Customer Satisfaction Doesn’t Matter
Lots of companies spend lots of money trying to unravel the secret of customer loyalty. They relentlessly measure customer satisfaction on every dimension imaginable: Was the service prompt? Was the salesperson helpful? Could anything have been done to make the buying experience better? The assumption is that most customers defect because they were dissatisfied in some way. So if you can keep customers satisfied, customer loyalty will benefit.
It turns out that assumption is dead wrong. Customers who say they’re satisfied walk away all the time. In fact, a recent study from the Gallup Organization found that customer satisfaction, as it’s traditionally measured, does nothing to boost repeat sales or customer loyalty. Read the rest of the article here.