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311Chapter 19: Fortifying Customer Relationships

Building Loyalty

Service builds loyalty.

To walk into a business and be greeted by name is a customer luxury.

To check into a hotel and be welcomed like a valued frequent guest is a
pleasure.

To be walked to your favorite table in a restaurant, to have your voice recog-
nized in a phone call to a small business, to have a record of your recent pur-
chases on file for easy reference — these are the kinds of conveniences and
service indicators that move satisfied customers into the loyal customer
category.

Imagine this hotel check-in scenario:

The clerk enters your name in the computer, looks up and says, Welcome
back! It’s been nearly three months since your last stay, so you haven’t seen our
remodeled restaurant. Let us know if we can make a reservation for you, and
here’s a card for a complimentary glass of wine with dinner. For now, let me get
you registered. Last time you preferred a nonsmoking room on the tenth floor.
Do you have a different preference for this stay?

Now compare it with this approach: Good afternoon. Do you have a reservation?
Under what name? Could you spell that again? Have you stayed with us before?

To develop loyalty, never make a frequent guest feel like a first-time guest and
aim to make even a first-time guest feel like a long-time friend. See Chapter 18
for customer service guidelines and tips.

Closing the quality gap

A quality gap occurs when there is a difference between a customer’s service
expectation and the perceived level of service received.

The quality gap exists entirely in the mind of the customer. Whether service
is satisfactory depends completely on your customer’s opinion. The litmus
test is simply whether the perception of service exceeded or fell short of
what was expected.