You Can't Eat Buzz: How To Create Profitable, Loyal Customers

Buzz is a magical force, but it only gets you so far in business. What you need is staying power, a customer experience that builds customer loyalty, that  gives customers a desire to return.

Buzz, don’t get me wrong, is important. Books have been written about this mysterious substance. But not by me.

Because buzz only will only take a business so far, and only for so long. Literally speaking, it only gets customers in the front door, to try you that first time. Which isn’t enough to build a business on, any more than building a business on Groupon discounts is a long-term strategy. 

Staying power and loyalty: can’t be bought with gimmicks

What you need is staying power. Something that makes customers want to stick around, that brings customers back for more.

No, I’m not here to recommend the latest loyalty gimmick or gizmo, some app-based version of a loyalty punchcard, some shiny sexy frequent buyer program, some “relevant-to-millennials” rewards program.

You’ll have to forgive me if I decline to go in that direction.  Instead, I want to share a vision with you.

A vision of home

The best model I know of for building a customer experience that brings customers back again and again is that of “home.” Here’s what I mean: If you want your customers to return over and over, you need to consciously create an environment/product/process/service that “feels like home” to them.

But not exactly

Now, if you think about it, customers don’t actually want the place they do business with to “be like home” – the home of the typical adult, with dirty dishes in the sink, deferred maintenance up the yin yang. So I use this “home” term advisedly and with some apprehension.

At home as a typical adult, you are in control, but only on a self-serve basis. In your childhood home (optimally), it was a different sort of experience. Food appeared at mealtimes. You didn’t have to worry about shopping for personal items. When light bulbs blew out, new ones replaced them. When you left in the morning for school, your parents were genuinely saddened by your departure, and they looked forward to seeing you again. Your personal preferences were well known and were ‘’magically’’ taken into consideration.

Recognition: The number one reason guests want to return 

So how does this apply to building staying power at your business?

Homebuilding in customer service often comes down to providing recognition.

What is recognition? It means being seen, literally and figuratively: being acknowledged, being welcomed, and being appreciated. Recognition, to quote restaurateur and master of hospitality Danny Meyer, who, as with many things, hits the (s)nail on the head here, is ‘‘the number one reason guests cite for wanting to return.’’

When a customer is arriving on a repeat visit, turn this into a special type of recognition: that the customer was missed, that his return fills a gap that was there in his absence.

So, concentrate on the following:

• Be visibly, audibly grateful any time you hear from an existing customer, any time an existing customer returns to your business.

• Spend a disproportionate amount of time, energy, and creativity on properly bidding them good-bye when they leave.

• Make sure that what they typically order is already pre-selected for them  (if appropriate) and available without any—any—hassle at all.

• And, by the way, don’t run “new customers only” specials unless your existing customers are somehow cut in on the deal.

This approach builds an environment that a customer will choose to return to, over and over and over. Where they’re known. Where they’re welcomed. Where things work. Where they not only can get what they want, but where you know what they want before they even have to ask for it.

This is the ultimate way to acknowledge a human being, in this case a customer.

And it will pay off for you royally.