Customer Loyalty
Horacio Falcão of INSEAD observes, “Once customer loyalty is lost, it can be very difficult to retrieve, leading to serious financial repercussions". The article goes on to talk about how to keep customers “cool”. But for us the challenge is to keep customers “warm” – and in our language that is all about positive energy. We are fascinated by human energy. We create awareness, we measure it, and we teach how to sustain it – at a personal and an organisational level.
Keep your customer warm
In my recent reading I came across an article entitled “Keep your customers cool”. It refreshed my memory of a great movie. Most businesses will probably never face a customer as angry as William Foster, the character played by Michael Douglas in the film Falling Down. After being told in a fast-food restaurant that he cannot order a breakfast meal because he’s missed the cut-off point by three minutes, Foster pulls out a machine gun and threatens the staff until the manager relents. In the end, Foster proves a fickle customer: he changes his mind and decides he wants to order from the lunch menu instead, only to lose his temper again when his flaccid-looking Double Whammy Cheese Burger fails to live up to its glossy representation on the printed menu. While most people would not condone Foster’s behaviour, many would sympathise with his frustration.
Horacio Falcão of INSEAD observes, “Once customer loyalty is lost, it can be very difficult to retrieve, leading to serious financial repercussions”.
The article goes on to talk about how to keep customers “cool”. But for us the challenge is to keep customers “warm” – and in our language that is all about positive energy.
We have observed that warm high energy customers are the key to sustained bottom line. And we have observed that the source of that positive customer energy is not advertising or marketing but the positive energy of the organisation – the people who service the customer relationship, directly or indirectly.
The energy of the organisation depends on the energy of its leadership, and leadership energy is driven and sustained by personal energy.
We are fascinated by human energy. We create awareness, we measure it, and we teach how to sustain it – at a personal and an organisational level.
It’s what we do best.
COLIN HALL
January 2007
