Darcie Davis

Before you read this article, make a list of all the businesses you are fiercely loyal to.  Who would you enthusiastically endorse, adamantly defend and whose competitors have no chance in hell at capturing your eye – or your business?  I am discussing business, not brands necessarily although many of us have powerful, obnoxious loyalty to certain brands (e.g. mine are Apple, BMW, Blue Bell Ice Cream).

It should be a long list, right?  I made my own list and the exercise was much harder than I thought.  There are so many great companies that I do business with both professionally and personally yet only a handful made it to my unflinching loyalty list.

The following companies have my complete customer loyalty.  I would step in front of a speeding freight train in order to keep doing business with them.  Here they are by name but not in any particular order or ranking:

Tall Oaks Cleaners

Whole Foods, nearly any store

Tom Phillips, financial advisor...

Here’s what I mean and I assume you will have several examples you can recall as well.

I subscribed to Angie’s List.  It’s a great service and I used it often as a consumer and as a place to put in my reviews on service providers.  I like that.  I get to voice my opinions, which is always so important for any customer.

For a few reasons I decided not to renew my subscription to Angie’s List.  Unfortunately, I forgot to make the adjustment to my PayPal account, which was poised to renew my subscription automatically.  When I got a notice from PayPal that my credit card had been charged for another year with Angie’s List, I was a bit miffed.  Okay, miffed at me for not catching that auto-renew thing but I didn’t want to be miffed at me; it was easier for me to place my irritation with Angie’s List.

I kept the chip on my shoulder and dialed the number for Customer Service at Angie’s List.  I had prepped myself for an argument.  Jess listened to my story, pulled up...

If every company in the world paid respect to the customers who felt positive about their experience working with the company as well as to customers who had negative experiences working with the company, our corporate worlds would be more profitable.

Why more profitable?  Companies are eager to uncover, publicize and share the great testimonials about their goods and services.  Can you identify a successful company that is eager to uncover, publicize and share the testimonials that are not so positive about them?  Name me one company that is being that truthful about their customer retention and satisfaction levels!

There has been a proliferation of websites and publicized works that provide candid feedback on goods and services offered by companies.  In fact, I rarely buy anything without consulting Consumers Reports first because I consider those staffers to be more objective than the company offering the goods.  Other websites such as Yelp, Epinions and Vault, for...

When many of us – including me – think about customer loyalty programs, we often think of material rewards such as money and/or goods.  The frequent mile programs initiated by the airline industry was an attempt at getting their customers to feel so loyal to an airline that the airline was willing to reward  customers with air mile points.  Once all the airlines began their own air mile programs, the uniqueness faded.  The objective became rather elusive once travelers were able to accumulate air miles from more than one source.

Then along came the credit card providers that blatantly call their rewards programs as “customer loyalty programs.”  Many credit card programs provide a means to accumulate air miles, which also dilute the customer loyalty that the airlines had expected.

I have seen many examples of “customer loyalty programs” and nearly all of them centered around a bribe.  Yes, a bribe to get a customer to start or keep buying.  Sometimes the customer...