Driving Customer Loyalty In Times Of Crisis

Coronavirus has shaken up the world. As companies deal with the realities of their impact on their top and bottom lines, it’s important to also not overlook the opportunity in customer loyalty. When any type of change is occurring, it’s a particularly great time to reassert and reestablish value with existing customers. When things go crazy, we assess who we can trust. Showing up, checking in, and creating value gets supercharged in times of crisis.

Driving customer loyalty is not a one-person job either, it requires full organizational focus. As Rob Markey says in “Are You Undervaluing Your Customers?”

The job of leadership in any major organizational shift is to articulate an inspiring vision, lay out a path, and engage every employee in the work ahead. The first thing leaders must do is get everybody on board. Building the case for customer value should be easy: When a company focuses on loyalty, it makes customers’ lives so much better that they keep coming back, and they bring their friends. Employees become inspired by the satisfaction that comes from making customers’ lives better.

What can we be doing now? Making contact, seeing what our clients need, providing services where appropriate, and deepening our relationships in the process. Everyone in our internal value chain should be kept aware of what’s working and what’s not towards driving engagement. If we can make our customers happy when things are haywire, their positivity will be further infectious through our teams, elevating the value of the work we are collectively doing.

We drive customer loyalty when everyone is on board and customers feel our focus. A little chaos (or even a lot) creates opportunities for relationship building interactions. These can be loyalty building with our customers and our colleagues if we keep our attention in the right places.