THE CUSTOMER INTIMACY LADDER: CLIMBING YOUR WAY TO CUSTOMER LOYALTY

No matter what industry event I perform at, there seems to be a general misunderstanding of both brand loyalty and customer experience (CX). Here we are going to explain the true nature of customer lifetime value and loyalty, and how to achieve it. Firstly, lets deal with loyalty. If someone regularly buys your product, shops on your site or enters your store, this does not make them a loyal customer. It makes them a repeat customer. The biggest mistake made by brands and businesses is to misunderstand transactional frequency for loyalty. I use Amazon regularly and have a prime membership, but I have no emotional relationship with the brand in any form. Their drivers are usually polite, the service efficient, the returns process easy to navigate. I use the brand because it is convenient. Looking at the data, they might be mistaken in thinking that Ken is a loyal user. They would be wrong. Ken is a transactional user but if another similar service came along with which I formed stronger emotional ties, I may never use Amazon again. Loyalty is an emotive property. Jeff Bezos owns no part of my heart. Performing globally, I fly regularly with most of the world’s airlines. I have used my ‘loyalty cards’ for Aer Lingus, British Airways, Emirates, American Airlines, Lufthansa, KLM, United, SAS and Delta all in the last 3 months. As a top-tier member of most (based simply of the number of air miles and trips I take annually), ironically, they each consider me a loyal customer, whereas the number of cards in my digital wallet proves that I am quite the opposite. They are mistaking frequency of use for loyalty.

Loyalty is Rooted in Emotion

Think of it in romantic relationship terms. A one-night stand is but a transaction, while a ‘friends-with-benefits’ situation is a frequent transactional relationship. Neither require or expect either party to be emotionally or sexually loyal to the other. But neither of these ‘situationships’ have the emotional depth that gives us the security, safety, belonging and support we crave as humans. A long-term relationship is something emotive, with shared intimacy and shared purpose. And most importantly, unless the partners are polyamorous, inherently expects loyalty and exclusivity. So, what changes as you move from a ‘friends-with-benefits’ relationship to something exclusive? What has shifted to cause the new relationship state or label? It is the deepening of emotion. Once emotions are involved, relationships can then flourish to be more significant. So, why would it be any different with customer and brand relationships? Once we engage emotion, we have the possibility to build a relationship. Until then we are mistaking the customers ‘situationship’ with us for a relationship. Just because they are booty calling us at 2am does not mean they love us. So how to you build this emotive customer loyalty? You invest in building a relationship. You actively seek to lay down foundations of intimacy, care, support, shared purpose and brand belonging.

Moving Beyond Customer Service to CX

To understand how you might do that, let’s deal with the second part of the misunderstanding related to CX. The words customer service and customer experience are often mixed up but understanding the difference is key to climbing the loyalty ladder. Customer Service is the core, the basics, today the hygiene factor. It is simply your ticket to play. Today’s customer expects you to get it right first time, for the process to be easy, quick and convenient. They expect some basic personalisation and service staff to be polite, knowledgeable, empathetic and engaged. Nothing I have written above will positively delight today’s customer. They are all simply their base expectations. The sad thing is, many businesses measure satisfaction this way, proud of their resulting high scores. 85% satisfaction they boast. This means nothing. All it means is that 85% of your customers got what they expected anyway. They were treated as they would expect. Meeting base expectations does not build emotive loyalty. Again, to go back to our relationship and dating analogy, you would expect similar on your first date, that they would turn up on time, have made some effort in how they dressed, and be interested in you. These are just base expectations. However, it doesn’t mean you should immediately choose this person as your life partner. As the saying goes, raise your expectations.

How to Surpass Expectations

When you fail to meet base expectations you fall off the bottom rung of the loyalty ladder before you even got climbing. Today, many businesses expect 5-star reviews for just getting the basics right. That is no longer how it works. You get 2 or 3 stars for the basics. You earn those additional stars by going beyond expectations, or of course lose them by failing to meet them. Customer Service (be it in-person or digital) is just that, the service part. It is about efficiency and practicality, knowledge and care. Start here in your business if you feel the basics aren’t right. There is little point in trying to climb higher up this ladder of emotive loyalty and customer engagement if you know the first rung is going to break. Customer Experience on the other hand is much broader than just Customer Service. It is about every part of the customer journey. It includes all the service elements but also the search, the product consumption, after care, peer-to-peer opinion and so forth. Basically, customer experience is just that, every experiential moment you have relating to a brand. I am writing this article on a Jet2 plane. It is a low-cost holiday airline I am using to return home from performing at a travel conference in Turkey.  To be fair, the business traveller is not the target market for this airline, but my frustration is real. The tray table is so small, without any extension, meaning my keyboard is mostly in the air (and I have a small Surface Pro). This means my device keeps sliding off. I am typing these words with lightest of keystrokes. Neither do the tables extend, but this has become standard for low-cost airlines, as have seats that do not recline. The more moving parts, the higher the opportunity for a malfunction, taking a seat out of operation. Less operating seats costs money so the solution is to remove the functionality. Is it frustrating to not be able to recline your seat for a 4.5-hour flight? Of course. This results in a poor customer ‘experience’. However, there are also no window blinds on the plane. This one I find fascinating as it is the first time I have come across this. As the bright afternoon sun beams through (remember at 36,000 feet there is always sun), passengers struggle to sleep or see their device screens. Cabin crew spent the first hour of the flight teaching most how to use the safety cards as temporary blindness screens. At least for once, those cards have come in handy. Maximising revenue by minimising costs is good business, but when it affects customer experience you enter dangerous territory. Again, when you are failing to deliver the basics on customer experience, you slide down the customer loyalty ladder.

Crafting Moments of Customer Delight

And what is the opposite? Well, it is about going beyond the experience expectation. In that same travel conference, there was a travel agent owner who described how he built strong relationships with customers by finding moments in the customer journey to surprise them. In a world where apps rule, there are still passengers (likely those of on older disposition) who struggle with digital.  For these customers he arrives at their door with a traditional ticket wallet, boarding cards and hotel check-in details printed out, handing these to them personally so they have less to worry about. For families holidaying with young children, he makes up airline entertainment packs, a small bag of novelty items to keep the children busy on the plane. With his offices near Manchester airport, he often told customers to use his own parking lot and paid for taxis to take them to departures, so that they didn’t have to incur the costs of airport parking. Each of these little moments add up and show his customers that he cares. He is going beyond base expectation and creating relationship building moments. Delight your customer often enough and you engage those precious emotions and lay your foundations for that loyalty relationship.

Moving Towards Customer Intimacy

So, once you are standing on the ‘excite and delight’ CX rung of this loyalty ladder, what’s the next step up? It is Customer Intimacy; a word I use more frequently today with the brands I advise than CX. Intimacy is defined as ‘fostering a sense of closeness’. Again, to distinguish it from customer service or CX, even a one-night stand is a ‘service’ or an ‘experience’. You could hand over money to a sex-worker and have an experience, but there will be no intimacy. Again, it is transactional, and some experiences become expected over time. The first night the hotel staff put a mint on your pillow, you might think ‘oh that’s lovely, yummy’. By the 3^rd or 4^th night of your stay you’re thinking ‘where’s my chocolate’? What started as a small, pleasant experience becomes expected and thus loses some of its shine or effect. Customer Intimacy is about looking for the moments where you can really make a difference in a customer’s life. At the same conference, a customer service award was given to Tiffany, one of their travel agents.

Customer Intimacy in Action

An elderly man had come into the store to bring forward the dates on his holiday to Thailand. He was clearly upset and during the conversation, the agent learned he had just been diagnosed with cancer and now wanted to take the holiday the next week, before his treatment started. Having made the changes, she noticed the customer’s passport was out of date. He was understandably devastated, and on contacting the passport office on his behalf, learned the fastest way to secure a new passport would be in-person. She then travelled to London, on her own day off, to secure this in-person appointment for him. That earliest appointment was on the following Monday, his day of travel. She took a second day off work to accompany him to this meeting as he was nervous, feeling he would not be capable of navigating the process and transfer from inner-city London to Heathrow. She helped him on the train, stood with him throughout the passport office appointment, and then travelled with him on the London Underground all the way to the departure gate at Heathrow. She went far beyond her duties to ensure her customer had the holiday he needed. She deserved her award. A lovely post-script I learned on talking with her that evening, was that the customer had called back into her store only a few days ago with the news that his treatment had been successful and he was in remission. Maybe the Thai beaches had helped too, who knows? But ask yourself the question who this customer will buy his holidays from for the rest of his life? And who his family and friends will use (because you can be guaranteed he has shared this story with anyone who will listen).

Culture and Leadership Drive Intimacy

This is customer intimacy. It is about putting empathy and care at the core of who you are as a business. It is about looking for every opportunity with customers to build relationship. It is about going out of your way, investing time and energy, just as you would in a romantic relationship. The closeness you seek with your customers will only come when you deliver on the intimate moments that matter. Culture is key here. Tiffany acted as she did because she works for Hays Travel, a 5000+ employee organisation led by Dame Irene Hays. Like Sir Richard Branson, Irene believes in empowering her staff and putting the customer at the core of everything they do. She leads with compassion, empathy, kindness and intimacy. She is the kind of CEO most others would like to emulate. Tiffany knew what needed to be done, not just because of who she is or her training, but also because of the philosophy and culture of the business, instilled from the very top. As a CX speaker, it is a delight to work with the Hays Travel audience. While other audiences listen intently, the Hays audience consume the content, eager to immediately take the inspiration home. It is their philosophy, the Hays way. They have a hunger for customer excellence. As a leader, it is your job to similarly empower your team to push past customer experience and strive for customer intimacy. It is in building intimacy and empathy into your everyday that you form emotive bonds with customers. Now I know what you are thinking – that you don’t have 5,000 Tiffany’s and we can’t have our employees all taking days off to go chaperoning customers.  Firstly, get culture, talent acquisition and training right, and you can have 5,000 Tiffanys.

AI Facilitates Greater Intimacy

And secondly AI is about to step in and allow us a depth and scale of connection we have never witnessed before. While empathy and emotive connection were once confined to in-person interactions, soon AI and hyper-personalisation will allow us to identify countless opportunities for going beyond customer expectations and intimacy. We will only be limited by our imaginations and creative execution with the customer journey and the data we hold. So, get the basics of customer service right, seek to go beyond the customers expectation through the customer journey to maximise CX, and seek to build emotive loyalty with intimacy and customer empathy and compassion. And a reminder – check your passport expiry date today. If you’ve learned nothing else from this article, it should be that unless you’re a Hays Travel customer, you’re going to start your holiday crying at the airport otherwise.