MAY 2010

Customer Loyalty:

How to Earn It, How to Keep It

by Jill Griffin

Business Growth Lies Not in the Earning,

But in the Keeping

REFRESHING THE CONCEPT OF CUSTOMER LOYALTY

QUICK OVERVIEW
Gone are the days when building, or at times stealing, market share ensured
business profitability. The flailing economy brought an end to the buying boom and
savvy consumers are increasingly stingy with their take-home pay. For that reason,
Jill Griffi ns book Customer Loyalty is welcome refreshment to entrepreneurs looking
for a path toward stable business growth.
Griffi n breathes new life into an age-old customer retention philosophy based on
relationship building, meeting customer needs and exceeding customer expectations.
She extrapolates the impact of growing loyal customers, applying the concept to
small businesses as well as to the boardrooms of international companies.
Its easy to understand why Griffi ns books, with her clear writing style and liberal
use of real-world examples, have been used in university classrooms. Customer Loyalty
has a primer quality that makes it perfect for those fi rst glimpsing the impact true
customer loyalty can have on the bottom line.

Jossey-Bass, a Wiley Imprint

2002, Jill Griffin
ISBN: 9780787963880
252 pages, $22.95

SUCCESS Points

APPLY AND ACHIEVE

Whether you are the CEO of a major corporation or an independent business
owner, the concepts youll discover in Customer Loyalty can help you attract, and most
important, retain, more customers. Here are a few suggestions you can apply to your
business now to build your own loyalty system:
Do your homework and familiarize yourself with loyalty measurement factors.
Get clear about your businesss customer retention rates, average number of new
customers monthly, and how frequently and how much customers purchase. Close
examination, says Griffi n, allows you to measure and track loyalty and gives a basis
for setting objectives for the next five years.
Think like a customer. Create and utilize need-based marketing, selling and
customer-care tools that allow you and your team members to be more effective.
Also, squash loyalty breakers, like a complicated return policy, immediately.

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From this book youll learn:

About the symbiotic
relationship that exists
between salespeople
and their customers, and
between companies and
their staff
Why its important to
focus on individual sales,
individual customers and
customer groups
Why thinking think
long-term makes sense
That knowing how your
customer experiences
value is critical
SUCCESS BOOK SUMMARIES

Customer Loyalty: How to Earn It, How to Keep It

odays companies must manage a strange paradox:

In the race to win market share and its promise
of profit, a company risks (and often loses) the
highest-margin customers, and in doing so,
worsens profitability rather than improving it. A company
interested in building a solid, loyal customer base uses an
approach different from that of a company interested in
simply building market share. Loyalty building requires the
company to emphasize the value of its products or services
and to show that it is interested in building a relationship with
the customer. The company recognizes that its business is to
build a stable customer base rather than make a single sale.
This shift in emphasis is sometimes subtle, but it is necessary
to create loyalty among customers and an understanding of the
importance of loyal customers to the company.

GRABBING MARKET SHARE

DOESNT PAY
When Leslie Otten purchased Sunday River Skiway in
Bethel, Maine, in 1980, he had a plan. He intended to use all
the well-established marketing techniques hed learned to
grab a share of the market for the largely unknown resort. By
offering lower prices, longer hours and more services, Otten
expected to win his new customers by wooing them away
from neighboring ski resorts. He knew that his resort was
comfortable, attractive and well-managed, so there would be
no reason for these new customers to be dissatisfied.
To Ottens dismay, he discovered after five years of hard
work, price cutting, creating customer incentives, sales,
discounts, coupons, bonusesdoing whatever it took to
get skiers to patronize his Skiwayresults were less than
satisfying. Sure, people came to his resort, just as they did
to others in the area, but profits were not growing and his
marketing tactics were not paying off.
Otten sat down and took a long hard look at what hed
been doing. What he found surprised him. With the major
emphasis on tracking sales and profits from new customers,
old customers were going unappreciated and dropping by the
wayside. Otten found his staff was taking existing customers
for granted. The staff assumed that Skiway didnt need to
worry about losing those customers to the competition.
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GROWING LOYAL CUSTOMERS

It was clear to Otten that he had to make a new plan to
develop economic security for his business. The strategy he
adopted flew in the face of standard procedures. Rather than
striving for market share, engaging in a competitive discounting
war or luring new customers through short-term incentives, he
decided to launch a campaign of growing customers.
The new plan paid off big. Instead of focusing only on
increased services, price breaks or longer hours, he and
his staff began doing everything possible to turn fi rsttime skiersthose who have never been on the boards
beforeinto loyal customers. Ottens plan included making
fi rst-time visitors enjoy skiing at his resort so much that they
would want to repeat the experience again and again.
Before Otten started courting first-time customers back in the
winter of 1984-85, only 40 percent of the people who visited
Sunday River ever returned. But thanks to Ottens retention
programs, more than 75 percent now returned for more ski
adventures. Those repeat enthusiasts were a major reason gross
revenues increased from $6 million to $18.3 million.
For people just learning to ski, the process can be
particularly frightening. Otten set out to minimize their
anxiety. Otten stationed helpers at every step along the way.
His most experienced instructors were assigned to new skiers.
Staff members helped new skiers select clothing, boots, skis
and accessories.
Otten barely broke even on skiers new to his resort. Instead,
he offered incentives for customers to come back. On their
fi rst visit, novices paid for their fi rst lesson, but equipment
and lift tickets were all free. The student was also given the
chance to sign up for two additional lessons, which included
the freebies. If students completed all three lessons, they were
given a coupon for a fourth day of free skiing. Furthermore,
Otten sold student poles, skis, boots and bindings at cost.
The result of all this nonprofit activity was surprising.
By the time skiers fi nished the three lessons and free day at
Sunday River Skiway, they were more than likely to become
loyal customers. Not only were customers satisfied; they were
virtually sold on the resort as the place to ski. Return skiers
guaranteed increasing profit and a stable growth rate.
Its been more than 20 years since Otten purchased Sunday
River, and a lot has changed. Hes grown the company from a
single small ski area in Maine into American Skiing, one of the
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SUCCESS BOOK SUMMARIES

Customer Loyalty: How to Earn It, How to Keep It

countrys leading operators, with nine world-class ski resorts

in both the eastern and western United States.

MARKET SHARE VS.

CUSTOMER LOYALTY
The average American company loses 20-40 percent of its
customers each year. Recognizing this pattern and its severe
impact on competitiveness and profitability, a business must
move away from the long-accepted market share strategy to a
radically different, more long-term approach to business: building
customer loyalty. This reorientation produces significant results.
Through increasing the rate of customer retention by as little
as a few percentage points, banks, retailers, insurance brokers,
distributors, healthcare providers and software manufacturers can
increase their profits by 25-100 percent.

Laws of Loyalty
Practice the 80/20 rule80 percent of your
revenue is being generated by 20 percent
of your customers. All customers are not
created equal.
Serve first; sell secondYou earn business
with service that is pleasant, productive and
personalized; if you dont deliver, theyll leave.
Aggressively seek out customer
complaintsMake it easy for customers to
complain, and treat complaints seriously.
Get responsive, and stay that way
Technology tools such as customer self-service,
e-mail management, and live chat and Web
callback are critical.

THE LONGER THE LOYALTY,

THE BIGGER THE REWARDS
Research shows that over a cross-section of industries, the
longer a company retains a loyal customer, the more profit
that customer generates. A company can boost profits 25-85
percent through increasing retention by as little as 5 percent.
If you find these profitability improvements too good to be
true, consider a couple of factors. Increased loyalty can bring cost
savings to a company in at least six areas: (1) reduced marketing
costs (customer acquisition costs require more dollars); (2) lower
transaction costs, such as negotiation and order processing; (3)
reduced customer turnover expenses (fewer lost customers to
replace); (4) increased cross-selling success, leading to larger
share of customer; (5) more positive word-of-mouth; (6) and,
assuming loyal customers are also satisfied, reduced failure costs
(reduction in rework, warranty claims and so forth).
But the benefits of loyalty and its effect on profitability go
well beyond cost savings. As usage increases, so does profit
margin. Here are five reasons for wooing a first-time customer
into becoming a lifetime buyer:
1. Sales go up because the customer is buying more
from you.
2. You strengthen your position in the marketplace
when customers are buying from you instead of
your competition.
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Know your customers definition of

valueInvest in customer loyalty research to
understand how well you deliver value.

3. Marketing costs go down when you dont have

to spend money to attract a repeat customer,
since you already have her. In addition, a satisfied
customer tells her friends, thereby decreasing
your need to advertise.
4. Youre better insulated from price competition
because a loyal customer is less likely to be lured
away by a discount of a few dollars.
5. A happy customer is likely to sample your other
product lines, thus helping you achieve a larger
share of customer.

LOYALTY AND THE

PURCHASE CYCLE
Each time a customer buys, he or she progresses through a
buying cycle.
Step One: Awareness You begin to establish the
all-important share of mind required to move your product
or service ahead of your competitors in the mind of the
prospective customer. At the awareness stage, a potential
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SUCCESS BOOK SUMMARIES

customer knows that you exist, but there is little bond between
you. At this point, another companys advertising or marketing
ploy can steal the customer away before you even get started.
Step Two: Initial Purchase You can impress the customer
positively or negatively with the product or service delivered,
the ease of the actual purchase transaction, and even the
company Web sites page loading time or ease of navigation.
Once this first purchase is made, you have the opportunity to
begin nurturing a loyal customer.
Step Three: Post-purchase Evaluation The customer
consciously or subconsciously evaluates the transaction. Most
customers rate themselves as being at least satisfied with the
product they are using. But satisfaction alone does not give a
company a strategic advantage.
Step Four: Decision to Repurchase The motivation to
repurchase comes from a favorable attitude toward the product
or service that is high in comparison to the attitude toward
potential alternatives. Decision to repurchase is often a natural
next step when a customer feels a strong emotional bond with
the product. Another powerful way to motivate a customer to
repurchase is to establish the idea in the customers mind that
switching to a competitor will cost the customer, in terms of
time, money or performance.
Step Five: Repurchase To be considered genuinely loyal,
the customer must buy again and again from the same business,
repeating steps three through five (the repurchase loop) many
times. The truly loyal customer rejects the competition and
repurchases from the same company whenever an item is
needed. This is the kind of customer that a business must court,
serve and nurture.

LOOPING THE REPURCHASE LOOP

Remember Sunday River Skiways Leslie Otten? Once
he created a frequent buyer, he fought to keep her. Otten
understood constantly cycling the skier through the
repurchase loop was essential to building loyalty. He employed
both emotional-bonding and cost-saving appeals to strengthen
repurchase. New skiers were sent a certificate celebrating
their completion of the learn-to-ski program. He created a
frequent-skier program, modeled after airline frequent-flyer
programs, that rewarded customers with a free day of skiing
after as few as five visits, and customers received mailings

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The longer a company retains a

loyal customer, the more profit
that customer generates.
describing special promotions. We want to stay top-of-mind,
Otten said. Weve worked too hard to have people forget us.
Four Types of Loyalty
1. No LoyaltyAvoid targeting no-loyalty buyers because
they will never be loyal customers; they add little to the
fi nancial strength of the business.
2. Inertia LoyaltyThis customer buys out of habit.
Its the because weve always used it or because its
convenient type of purchase. This buyer is ripe for a
competitors product that can demonstrate a visible
benefit to switching. It is possible to turn inertia loyalty
into a higher form of loyalty by actively courting the
customer.
3. Latent LoyaltySituational effects rather than
attitudinal influences determine repeat purchase. By
understanding situational factors that contribute to latent
loyalty, a business can devise a strategy to combat them.
4. Premium LoyaltyPeople are proud of discovering
and using the product and take pleasure in sharing their
knowledge with peers and family. These customers
become vocal advocates for the product or service and
constantly refer others to it.
Doctoring the inertia, latent or no-loyalty conditions of
your current customers and fi nding a way to upgrade them
to premium loyalty are two aspects of loyalty management.
An even more proactive approach is to start from the earliest
stages of customer development and devise ways to nurture
and enhance loyalty throughout the customers history with
your company. This way, you can better manage development
of loyalty and minimize, or in some cases, even avoid, such
conditions as inertia or latent.

LOYALTY OVER TIME

People grow into loyal customers by stages. The process is
accomplished over time, with nurturing, and with attention to
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SUCCESS BOOK SUMMARIES

Customer Loyalty: How to Earn It, How to Keep It

each stage of growth. By recognizing each stage and meeting

those specific needs, a company has a greater chance of
converting a buyer into a loyal customer or client.
Stage One: Suspect. We believe, or suspect, they might
buy, but we dont know enough yet to be sure.
Stage Two: Prospect. A prospect is someone who has
a need for your product or service and is able to buy.
Prospects may know who you are where you are and what
you sell, but they still havent bought from you.
Stage Three: Disqualified Prospect. Disqualified
prospects are those prospects about whom you have learned
enough to know that they do not need, or do not have the
ability to buy, your products.
Stage Four: First-Time Customer. This person can be a
customer of yours and a customer of your competitor as well.
Stage Five: Repeat Customer. Repeat customers
are people who have purchased from you two or more
times. They may have bought the same product twice
or bought two different products or services on two or
more occasions.
Stage Six: Client. A client buys everything you have to sell
that he can possibly use and purchases regularly. In addition,
however, an advocate encourages others to buy from you.
Stage Seven: Lost Customer or Client. Someone who
was once a customer or client but has not bought from you
in at least one normal purchase cycle.

PROFIT GENERATOR SYSTEM

An organization funnels suspects into its marketing system,
and each is qualified as a high-potential prospect or disqualified.
Disqualified prospects are filtered out, while qualified prospects
remain inside. The sooner a disqualified prospect is fi ltered
out, the better for you. Wasting time and money on a suspect
who will not buy or is unable to buy cuts dramatically into your
profit. Focus on qualified prospects with the goal of turning
them into first-time customers, and then repeat customers, and
eventually clients and advocates.
The rule of thumb in working with the Profit Generator system
is that the goal for you within each stage of development is to
grow the relationship into the next stage of development. The
goal of interacting with a prospect is to turn a prospect into a
first-time customer, a repeat customer into a client, a client into

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an advocate. Once you reach the advocate stage, your job is to

keep the person buying and referring. A company can enjoy real
profits once the customer has evolved into the latter stages of
the Profit Generator process. Failure to grow a customer to an
advanced stage robs the company of profit and valuable referrals.

THE BIG PICTURE

The Profit Generator system can put the importance of
customer conversion and loyalty into perspective for every
employee in an organization. Until recent years, completing
a sale was the end of the process for too many marketing
strategists. Little or no time or money was allocated for creating
a special relationship with the companys best customers. Most
companieswhether selling goods or servicesfailed to grasp,
much less calculate and record, the lifetime value of a customer.
Most focused on making a sale rather than concentrating
more marketing dollars on having that sale lead to a long-term
profitable relationship.

GROWING LOYALTY AND PROFITS

THROUGH CURRENT CUSTOMERS
An up-to-date list of your current customers is the most
valuable list you can own, because, by definition, it identifies
people who have already made it into at least the second stage of
the Profit Generator cycle. You can use the list to help motivate
your current customers to buy more frequently and to spend
more when they buy. In other words, your customer database
moves you from a reactive role in business building to a proactive
one. You no longer have to wait for your customer to contact you.
The Profit Generator system is about focusing marketing and
selling efforts on a companys most promising future customers:
those it already has. There are essentially three ways to do
more business:
1. Have more customers.
2. Have more purchases.
3. Have more expensive purchases.
The Profit Generator system focuses on leveraging items two
and three. Currently, there seems to be a sense in marketing
that landing new customers (acquisition program) is more
rewarding and exciting than holding on to current customers
(retention program) or increasing business volume among
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SUCCESS BOOK SUMMARIES

Customer Loyalty: How to Earn It, How to Keep It

current customers. For some reason, the thrill of chasing

new customers and of closing the first deal seems more
challenging than keeping the customers you already have.
Finding new customers often involves flashy advertising, new
sales techniques and innovating marketing approaches. This
sometimes makes marketing people feel creative and aggressive,
but in fact, it is possible to be both creative and innovative
devising methods for keeping existing customers happyand
the fi nancial returns are generally much greater for retention
than for acquisition.

THE ONLY CONSTANT IS CHANGE

Just like the world we live in, your loyalty system must be everchanging. The particular methods you employ to earn loyalty
today may need a major overhaul 12 months from now. You must
keep modifying, upgrading and changing your system to meet the
changing demands of your marketplace and your customer.
There are no guarantees of loyalty. Unless you continue to
provide value, as your customers defi ne it, even the customers
and clients who seem most loyal will eventually go elsewhere.
Perhaps former Stouffer Chairman Stanley Gault has the best
prescription of all for maintaining a loyalty clientele: Theres
no magic formula for staying close to your customer. Its basic
consideration, time, effort, commitment and follow-up.
Successful business leaders know that the real solution to
loyalty lies in creating an ever-changing system that develops
and nurtures the loyal customer. Start right now to devise new
ways to attract and keep customers. You can always fi nd new
solutions in the concept of customer stages and in the fact that
loyalty is developed and earned one step at a time.

About the Author

Jill Griffin is an expert in the field of
customer keeping, having authored books
not only on customer loyalty, but also the
art of winning customers back, and taming
search-and-switch customers. Colleges
and universities, including University of
Texas McCombs School of Business and Northwestern University,
have adopted her books as teaching texts.
She founded Loyalty University, where she teaches
individuals, businesses and corporate boards of directors
practical, proven customer-keeping solutions. Griffins client
list includes companies such as Dell, Microsoft, Ford Motor
Company, Subaru, Marriott Hotels, Hewlett-Packard, Cendant,
IBM, Wells Fargo and Sprint.

Recommended Reading
If you enjoyed the summary of Customer Loyalty,
consider adding the book to your personal success
library. You may also want to check out:

Jill received the 2003 Distinguished Alumna Award for the

University of South Carolina Moore School of Business, where
she earned MBA and bachelor of science degrees, magna cum
laude. She now serves on the schools board of trustees.

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Summarized by permission of the publisher, Jossey-Bass, a Wiley Imprint, 989 Market St., San
Francisco, CA 94103. Customer Loyalty by Jill Griffin. 2002 by Jill Griffin.
2010 SUCCESS Media. All rights reserved. Materials may not be reproduced in whole or in part
in any form without prior written permission. Published by SUCCESS Media, 200 Swisher Rd.,
Lake Dallas, TX 75065, USA. SUCCESS.com

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