When you make decisions that respect and honor customers, you will earn their admiration; eventually even love. Then customers will begin to grow your business for you. Two years of research (preparing for the book, "I Love You More than My Dog") indicate that five decisions drive devoted customers and business growth.

When customers love you, they'll not only turn to you when a particular product or service is needed, they'll turn to you first, regardless of the competition. They will tell your story, forming an army of cheerleaders, urging friends, neighbors, colleagues, even strangers. At Yelp, Facebook, Epinions, Twitter, chat rooms, and hundreds of other websites that give customers a forum for their opinions on their experience with companies, people are not bashful to tell stories about how they feel when they are treated well. Customers who love you won't be able to stop raving about you. But you need to earn the right to their story first.

Making these five decisions will help you to earn the right to have your story told. They will drive the behaviors customers love.

Discover the story of your company in the marketplace: Evaluate how you are making these five decisions.

As most avid shoppers now know, Amazon has acquired Zappos.com in a transaction that exceeds $800 million. This is clearly great for Zappos investors. But how about for Zappos and Amazon customers? Is this a marriage made in retail heaven?

Let's start with what we know:

Amazon and Zappos both began with the customer at the core of their operations.
Amazon built credibility and a following through bringing operational efficiency and reliability to the book buying experience. That earned them the right to continue to add product categories through the years. From the first book they sold in 1995, Amazon earned the right to sell music in 1998 and consumer electronics and toys in 1999. Since then the addition of nearly every category has been met with consumer acceptance.

Zappos built a zealot following by guaranteeing the delivery of shoes along with the delivery of a warm and endearing conversation. And an experience delivered by a group of people simply thrilled to be a part of Zappos. This humane approach breeds intense customer loyalty, with customers referring to Zappos as "Their" Zappos.

Every business has customers who have departed.

There are a variety of reasons that prompt departure. And how you react to the departure will either validate that they left for a good reason, or begin the process of bringing back that customer and that customer revenue.

In fact, companies that do a great job of winning back departed customers will frequently have a stronger relationship as a result.

Follow these five steps to identify and regain customer trust and relationships:

When asked by the Conference Board in 2005 to rank the challenges that keep them up at night, U.S.-based CEOs put customer loyalty and retention third overall, just behind steady top-line growth and consistent execution of strategy by top management. The three issues are linked, of course, which gets to the heart of why they’re perennial sore spots for CEOs. A company having problems consistently executing across leadership divisions is also likely to experience challenges delivering a cohesive customer experience—challenges that will have an impact on keeping and developing profitable customers.

Answer the 12 Commitment Questions Below to Find Out

I've never seen a CEO who wouldn't sign up for customer loyalty, customer focus and just plain improving things for their customers. It's driving the company to do something about it that's the challenge. There are a number of telltale signs that determine pretty quickly if the company is serious about the job or not. This begins with the CEO and leadership and cascades all the way through the ranks of the company. These specific leadership actions go on in companies that have taken the commitment past lip service. Understanding customer issues and what drives customer loyalty become the stuff of everyday conversations – not just when one soul has been lucky enough to get it on the CEO's staff meeting agenda (no joke). The issues are trended and understood and talked about. Building customer experiences and relationships is considered the work of the organization – not something layered on the ‘real' work of achieving quarterly sales goals.

Inspired customer leadership in the very best companies on earth came from the heart and soul of the impassioned leader of the organization who had an instinct on where to take the business for customers, and absolute clarity on how to inspire the organization to make it happen. These companies all started small, and it was the personal mission of the person at the helm who inspiration drove the business to where it is today. Lands’ End, for example, when it began started in a humble walk up building in Chicago’s sailing hardware district – and it was Gary Comer’s personal vision that moved the company forward. In fact, even as we grew, he pulled us back to our roots, saying “Think small, think one customer at a time…the rest will take care of itself.” And it did.

Customer leaders have two traits that set them and their companies apart – they have gut and guts. As taken from Chief Customer Officer: Getting Past Lip Service to Passionate Action, here’s what they have and what they do:

Do you ever get on the telephone with customers who have either left your firm or show up as detractors in surveys? At one company I worked with, executives got on the line and got some amazing insights. When you're working on a strategy for people who promote and recommend your company or product, don't neglect the detractors. It's important to look at the other end of the spectrum and really understand and feel the pain of those people and—even more importantly—discover why they're not happy. If you listen hard to their feedback, you can mine the gold and improve your organization—and your relationship with your customers.

I find this breaks down into five key action items:

Once you know your "Promoters," the goal should be to bring them into the fold of your business. Think of this group of zealots as your internal advisors and the most important marketing arm of your company.

If they truly do "love" you...their words will mean much more to other perspective customers than any declaration you can make about how good you are.

But how do you achieve this? Please don’t think this is about turning to them to get quotes and case studies about how great you are. Naturally this is something you might do with a few, but this action isn’t what strengthens the relationship.

There are three things that will help to engender a strong, lasting bond with this group of customers who should be considered a most valuable asset of your company—to be nurtured and cared for.

1. Involvement
   Consider your "Promoters" as the most important, credible source of feedback for the development of new products, improvement of services and for prioritizing where to spend your resources and time.

   Bring them in for design sessions. Reach out to them and ask their opinion. Establish an advisory group. Have executives call several each quarter to have the voices of this very important group in your ear.

   Read more »

In 25 years of working with leaders and business to focus on customers...what I've is often that the score is the end game. First it was garnering a great ‘satisfaction' score, then one for ‘loyalty,' followed by ‘experience,' and now Net Promoter™.

The name of the game should be giving customers a memory and experience so great...that they'll want to repeat it. Yet, corporations in their quest to drive customer focus have attempted to improve customer experiences by attaching things people want to the attainment of a good score. It's the score that's tied to people's compensation and it's the score that determines if people get that bonus to pay for braces or that trip to Disneyland or college tuition. Pavlov himself couldn't have set up a better behavior modification system. The sad news is that the behavior modified is how to get the customer to give a better score, not taking the data to heart to change the company.

Net Promoter™ can break through and drive the change...
But ONLY if you break the cycle of what is classically done with the information you receive.

Macs and iPods have legions of fans. But Apple has done something else with its Apple Stores. It has wired in the experience of its stores to make them destinations. They are like Starbucks for teenagers. They have become destinations because the experience is wrapped around the product—and around the communities of people using, talking about and gathering to use the product.

Jesse James Garrett, president of Adaptive Path, has a good description of the typical store in his article, Six Design Lessons From the Apple Store, July 9, 2004: