Chapter 25. Creating Obnoxiously Devoted Customers

Chip R. Bell

They wear ugly razorback hog hats! They paint their faces red and holler, "Woo pig sooey!" in the most obnoxious, uncivilized way. Most are completely sober. Many wore business suits to work the day before. But on a Fall Saturday afternoon at the University of Arkansas, these normally sane people engage in the insane ritual of devotion...for a football team. They are more than simply fond of their Arkansas Razorbacks...they love 'em! The same is true for Cheese Heads, Deadheads, Yankee fans, and so on.

What if these enthusiasts were your customers? What would "wear-a-funny-hat-and paint-your-face" fidelity look like for your enterprise? And, what would you need to do to inflame such zealous commitment? How do you unleash obnoxious devotion from your customers?

The last question started a serious discussion about levels of devotion. Loyal customers come back, buy more, pay more, forgive more, and champion more. But these are actions appropriate to a fan...not a lunatic, go-nuts, follow-you-to-the-ends-of-the earth type zealot! Is there a level of devotion beyond loyalty? We labeled it "customer love" and set out to uncover its anatomy.

"Who are the customers you would label the devoted zealots of your organization?" we asked a number of companies. Surprisingly, some required a rigorous definition of this upper devotion stratum only to discover that they probably did not have any. Others, like the Ritz Carlton, Nordstrom, USAA, Harley Davidson, Disney World, and the Marriott could easily identify their borderline groupies. Interviewing these aficionados provided a basis for an understanding of customer love.

The pursuit of customer love is not just about one-to-one personalization, although that can certainly be a component. The quest for customer love is not simply about the economics of lifetime value, although customers who love you are more likely to stay with you over time. The "love" strategy is an attitude that starts with a deep allegiance to the very nobility of service. It is the perspective the merchant in your hometown used when treating you as a valued neighbor, not a valuable consumer. While not a complex strategy, it can be difficult to implement, particularly in an organization with many, many customers and frontline service people. Making the strategy work requires a special culture and uncommon methods. That is where our story begins.

Seeing Through the Eye of the Beholder

My dad was a big fan of the Mutt and Jeff comic strip. When I was a little boy, I remember him reading it religiously. One of his favorite strips portrayed Mutt saying to Jeff, "If everybody saw like I did, everybody would want my wife." To which Jeff responded, "If everybody saw like I did, nobody would want your wife." It was my early introduction to the "eye of the beholder" idea.

Customer love is as complex as any other type of love. Like Mutt and Jeff, what attracts me to a service or product provider might be completely different than what attracts you. I have a friend whose idea of the perfect hotel check-in is to be able to get from the curb out front to the room upstairs in less than 30 seconds without conversation with a living soul. For me, unless it is super late or there's a long wait, I would rather chat with the front desk clerk, build a personal bond I might need later, influence the choice of the room I get, and make someone smile.

Customer love is not about a sure-fire formula guaranteed to be a hit simply by mixing the elements and stirring with enthusiasm. That said there were consistent parts of the anatomy reported frequently by these "obnoxiously devoted customers." Figure 25.1 provides the parts required to maximize attraction; the strength of any part is dependent on the customer. Remember Mutt and Jeff!

Figure 25.1. The anatomy of customer love.

Enlistment: Customers Care When They Share

"Dinner on the ground" was code for participation when I was growing up. While the event went with all family reunions, this special form of community most often occurred after certain church services. It was an event for little boys to run and holler unsupervised, since their caretakers were occupied with setup and cleanup. Women got to show off new recipes; men compared their prowess with baseball trivia. You went home after eating way too much fried chicken and homemade ice cream. This "everyone bring something" event helped people feel more interdependent. It was a sad day for this love feast when someone got the bright idea of "just calling Big Al and having him bring the barbecue with all the trimmings."

Devotion toward a service provider can ratchet up dramatically when customers get an opportunity to put some "skin in the game." Inclusion not only captures the creativity and competence of customers as they serve with you, but their commitment and allegiance rise as well. Sometimes, customers are not interested in participation; sometimes the inclusion of customers is inappropriate. The secret is knowing when and how to include. Wise service providers attract customer love by making the "dinner on the ground" side of service as fun, memorable, and wholesome as a church picnic.

Engagement: The Power of Straight Talk

Research in the retail industry shows that customers who have a problem and complain spend, on average, twice as much with a store as customers who have a problem and don't complain. The percentage might be different in other industries, but the principle remains the same. Complaining customers are loyal customers. But how do you get customers to absolutely level with you?

Eliminate any defensiveness when querying customers. No matter what they tell you, ask for more feedback rather than explaining. Instead of asking customers an evaluation question ("How was everything?"), try a problem-solving question ("What is one way we might improve our service to you?"). When you make a change—even a partial one—due to a customer's input, follow up and let him or her know. It's like this: If you were on trial for being a poor listener, would your customers have the evidence that would get you acquitted? It means listening to your customers in a way that makes them experience that their input was valued and made a difference.

Dramatic listening is a contact sport, not a research project. Market research and survey results give you data, not loyalty; they give you information, not devotion. Stanley Marcus, co-founder of Dallas, Texas-based Neiman-Marcus once said; "A market never purchased a single item in one of my stores, but a lot of customers came in and made me a rich man!" Think about the most important relationship in your life today. Can you imagine using a survey to get feedback in that relationship? "Honey, in the morning when you come down for breakfast, beside your cereal bowl you'll find a comment card." If your "important relationship" were like mine, you would wind up eating that survey for breakfast! Customer love is built on face-to-face engagement laced with straight talk and swift responsiveness.

Enlightenment: Growing Customer Love

Customers have learned that their ability to thrive is anchored in their capacity to keep up. They seek learning in practically every facet of life. As customers, we want software that not only instructs in application, but also offers insights into possibilities. When products come with assembly instructions, we also want to know about maintenance, add-on features, and access to information on upgrades. Call-center employees get dinged by customers much more quickly for inadequate knowledge than for rude interchange. In fact, we'd rather have a surly expert than a polite idiot. The service provider able to implant enlightenment into the experience will win customer devotion.

Larry Lehman manages the Eagle Postal Center near my office. It's where I go to mail packages, office supplies, and a graduate education on office efficiency. Larry noticed that I had mailed several items over a 2-month period to my publicist. "Why don't I have you a rubber stamp made with her name and address?" he asked. "It'll save you time, and I can do it in your same type style." His special attention-to-detail feature did not stop there. He went back to all my mailings for the previous year, ascertained the high-frequency items, calculated the time it took for me to type mailing labels, and suggested I have four more rubber stamps made. "These are the ones that'll be cost effective for you to have done," he advised. It was smart service at its best.

My financial consultant ends every phone consultation with the words: "Here's a question I want you to think about between now and the next time we talk." She starts our next financial-review session with a discussion of these thought-provoking questions. When I purchased my last car, the salesperson gave me a complete tour of every feature, knob, and gadget. After a recent surgical removal of a small skin cancer, my physician armed me with articles about my condition from her medical journals. While I did not understand much of the medical jargon, her concern for my wisdom as well as my well-being gave me confidence...and loyalty. Grow your customers and you'll grow your customer base.

Entrustment: Affirming the Covenant

Reliability, according to customer research, is the attribute critical to customer satisfaction. But there is a level above reliability...it is the stuff trust is made of. Reliability is what we do to convince the customer that we can be trusted. Customer service is an implied covenant—a promise to exchange value for value. Covenants are brokered on two-way trust. One side is obvious: The customer trusts the organization to do what has been promised. Yet, the other side is equally important: actions that tell customers they are trusted. It's the leap-of-faith that service and product providers take that involves some level of risk with customers.

Love starts with trust; love is solidified through betrayal. Customers are often gun shy of service providers until they witness service recovery. Before service failure, there is only hope; after service failure, there is proof. It is through the effective management of betrayal that customers come to truly trust. Think about it. Recall all the great service stories you have heard in your life. Most were about heroics when things went wrong.

This does not imply that service providers should intentionally screw up so they can fix a problem for their customers. It does mean that we take enough risk to create a likely potential for a mistake, and then handle the service betrayal with the care of a great friend. Such powerful restoration takes a culture in which service people view mistakes as a chance to learn and customer complaints as a valuable gift. As there is a dark side to "for better" and "in health" in life relationships, there is often one for customer relationships. Customers do not expect you to be perfect; they do expect you to care. How service providers demonstrate that caring can make a major difference in the adoration of those served.

Empowerment: Customer Control Through Consistency

Customers feel a sense of power when they feel in control, and "in control" happens through consistency. As customers, we would be knocked off our in-control platform should McDonald's suddenly sport tablecloths, candles, and fine china without warning, or should a five-star restaurant serve our gourmet meal in a Styrofoam container with a plastic fork. It is the unpredictability of negative surprise that robs us of the sense of control that gives us power and confidence.

What empowers customers is delivering first-rate reliability and "you-can-take-it-to-the-bank" consistency around the core offering—the basic need the customer hopes to fill. Sure, you can include a pleasant surprise with some value-added nonessential—but you should not change the core offering. A McDonald's employee can dazzle a customer by remembering him or her from a previous last trip, giving a free order of fries if there's a wait, or refilling a coffee cup with a smile and without a request. But if that employee puts jalapenos on the customer's Egg McMuffin, it throws the customer a curve ball that causes him or her to strike out...and you lose the customer loyalty ballgame.

Keep the constancy of the core offering absolutely sacred. If you were an airline, that means not tinkering with the basic proposition of getting passengers from point A to point B, safely, on time, and with their luggage arriving on the same day. All the frequent flyer points and smiling flight attendants in the world won't make up for late flights and lost luggage. When someone considers a new feature or technique, ask yourself if this addition will leave customers insecure about the reliability of the core service. Craft a simple vision with clear values and communicate them in a way that helps all employees see the link between the big picture and their roles. Model allegiance to the core offering and protect it with the same aggression that Disney uses to safeguard Mickey Mouse or that Coca-Cola uses to not weaken its brand name.

Enchantment: Making the Process Magical

It goes by many handles: delight, dazzle, and knock your socks off! Regardless of the modifier, service with a surprise still builds customer devotion. We cannot rely on "wowing" the customer as our mainstay—at some point we run out of room trying to one-up the last experience. But most of us still enjoy an occasional unexpected gesture or the thrill of making a moment unique with candles, champagne, or a backrub.

Enchantment is a surprise created in a way that keeps the mechanics a secret. It is a service arrow aimed straight at the heart. At it's best, it is simple and pure. It is a housekeeper at a Disney hotel moving a Mickey Mouse stuffed toy around the room to make a young guest think "Mickey's been playing while we were gone." It's a nurse remembering that you like your coffee black and managing to have a big cup waiting for you right after the blood test you fasted to have performed. It's your pharmacist leaving a "meow, meow" message on your answering machine telling your cat to remind you to pick up a prescription ordered by the vet. It is the mechanic who writes on your car repair ticket, "Noticed your pressure valve was worn down, so I replaced it—no charge."

A key advantage of the pursuit of enchantment is what it does to the frontline person. Like planning a surprise birthday party, the creators gain as much as the recipients. The pursuit of enchantment helps associates think differently about customers. Connections are more personal; communications more attentive. When associates are a part of a culture that supports customer enchantment, there is a sense of joy that is passed on to customers who reciprocate with their affirmation, gratitude, and loyalty.

Endearment: Gifting Without a Toll

This is the era of the short term. We expect results to happen faster and faster. The taxi does not go fast enough; the stock market is not open long enough; the sales graph is not steep enough. The frenetic raising of all standards evokes a greed mentality. "How can I help?" has been too often replaced with "What have you done for me lately?" We think far more about squeezing margins than we do about extra helpings.

Customers adore those service providers who are not preoccupied with keeping score. Such service providers know that generosity works like love: The more you give the more there is. The giver mentality is what makes marriages work, partnerships prosper, and customers fall in love. The wisdom of generosity lies in its being laced with authenticity. This suggests a culture in which associates are treated with the same endearment they are encouraged to demonstrate to customers.

Customers who like you come back. But customers who love you go out of their way to take care of you. They don't just recommend you; they insist their friends do business with you. They not only forgive you when you make mistakes, they defend you to others who have bad experiences with you. They give you candid feedback when they spot a problem, even if you take their feedback for granted. They never sue or threaten to sue. And, because they feel committed to you and see value in emotional terms, they will pay more for what they get from you...because they're convinced it is worth it.

Issuing funny hats and face paint to customers or teaching them the company fight song won't yield the enthusiastic fervor that you witness at the stadium, in the stands, or on the tube. Customers are not attracted by the cosmetics of customer love. But include customers, connect with them, teach them, trust them, reassure them, wow them, and care for them, and they will passionately reward you with their devotion, their advocacy, and their funds.