Build­ing a com­munity of cus­tom­ers who con­tinu­ally stand by you is stronger than a rela­tion­ship built merely on repeat business.

Lets look a bit deeper, repeat busi­ness is when people do busi­ness con­tinu­ally with you over a period of time. Loyal cus­tom­ers are those who stand beside you and enjoy work­ing with you, no mat­ter the bet­ter offers that are out there to entice them.

Repeat busi­ness is eas­ily won, loy­alty is not a short term res­ult but an ongo­ing com­mit­ment to build a rela­tion­ship by a clear shift in per­cep­tion where you move from a ser­vice pro­vider (with a host of com­pet­it­ors) to one who is seen as mak­ing their lives better.

Build­ing cus­tomer loy­alty is all about being seen as being able to solve prob­lems and provide a bene­fit to another per­son or busi­ness. People stick by people who are able to provide advice and clear judg­ment, as opposed to ‘job done, invoice out.’

A good example of the two sides between repeat busi­ness and cus­tomer loy­alty has been my exper­i­ence with Black­berry. Over the past six years, I depended on my Black­berry and didn’t really pay much atten­tion to the added bene­fits. The apps were a bit clunky, noth­ing was really tweaked to make the user exper­i­ence more inter­act­ive, I just paid my line rental every month and because my con­tacts were on the phone it was just easier to upgrade to a new Black­berry when the time came round.

Last week I moved to iPhone (so now along­side the Mac and iPad have the hat-​trick), it’s where a life­style is drawn to. It’s clear that the Apple aim is to empower the indi­vidual and this is where we move from repeat busi­ness to loy­alty. When the focus moves to the indi­vidual, this is the key in switch­ing to loyalty.

If we can cham­pion the brands that we rep­res­ent and move to a way of work­ing that is focused on ‘how can I help you’ and oth­ers believ­ing in what we rep­res­ent then the path changes from repeat cus­tom­ers to an army of loyal advocates.

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