Creating loyalty through great customer experiences

Brandon Schauer from Adaptive Path wrote a great article last week called The Long Wow, about how to create customer loyalty through repeated great customer experiences.  It encourages companies to go beyond just measuring loyalty (through overly simplistic measures like Net Promoter Score) or instituting "loyalty programs", and spend time to create experiences that delight customers again and again.  To quote from the article:

True loyalty grows within people based on a series of notable interactions they have, over time, with a company’s products and services. No card-carrying programs are necessary: Apple doesn’t have a traditional loyalty program; neither does Nike or Harley-Davidson. These companies impress, please, and stand out in the minds of their customers through repeated, notably great experiences.

As I read through the article (and you should too!), a couple of recent experience came to mind of how 2 completely different companies either made me loyal from the start, or increased my loyalty by doing something small to help me out.

 

1.  Running Revolution

Nothing is more important for a runner than shoes.  After sticking with New Balance shoes for years, I recently decided to try out something new.  But since I didn't know where to start, a colleague recommended Running Revolution, a small boutique shop close to where I live.  I became a loyal customer long before I even bought my shoes there.

These guys get runners.  There are no prices on the shoes -- for them it's about finding the right shoe for you, and nothing else.  They measured my foot with thermals, brought out pairs of shoes that they knew would be a good fit for me, put me on the treadmill and videotaped me to measure bio-mechanics, and I can go on and on.  Suffice to say that I didn't walk out with the most expensive shoes in the store, but I will never buy running shoes anywhere else again.  They made a life-time customer simply by fulfilling my need for a great running shoe.  They know that I will come back again and again, so they don't have to sell me the most expensive shoe in the store right then and there.

 

2. Amazon.com

Even though I'm already a loyal Amazon customer, the repeated great experiences keep strengthening that loyalty.  Small things count.  While browsing around, I noticed that the Overnight 1 Click button was disabled.  When I scrolled over the button, I got this message:

How nice and and completely unnecessary of them!   They could've gotten an extra $3.99 shipping cost out of me, but instead they refused to let me pay extra.

 

I'm sharing this as examples of what Brandon points out in his article -- that through a continuous focus on user needs and building great experiences, you create loyal customers that are so much more valuable in the long run than if your only goal is to squeeze as much revenue out of them as you possible can, right now.  Unfortunately Wall Street doesn't believe in this unique brand of economic "delayed gratification", but I wish more companies would just start doing it and prove them wrong...