Guest Blog: Are Your Customers Telling a Beloved Company Story?

This week on our Friends on Friday guest blog post, my colleague and friend Jeanne Bliss writes about beloved companies. She shares how a company can become beloved and how it influences the customer.– Shep Hyken

A beloved company blends commerce with its humanity, they blend its personal lives with its business lives, and they make decisions that are congruent with honoring the person on the other end of the business transaction.

Beloved companies know they are defined in the fleeting moments of customer interaction. (These are moments of truth for the beloved company.)

Beloved Companies Know:

• Actions that come from their decisions indicate what the company values.
• Actions show how much the company considers the customer.
• Actions reflect back on the company — giving customers a glimpse of who they are as people.

Customer love is a reward for (what some consider) irrational business behavior. Companies that grow because of their bonds with customers do so because they aren’t always looking over their shoulders at what each decision will get them. In a world where products and services are available in a hundred variations, beloved companies get a disproportionate piece of the pie because of how they treat their customers.

Studying the decisions made by beloved companies can give you a view of the inner workings that enable a company to become beloved. For beloved companies, making decisions that drive customer loyalty is how they enable moments of  “Wow!” in a world of customer experience “vanilla.”

Decision 1: Beloved Companies Decide to Believe “We trust our customers. We trust those who serve them.”

Decision 2: Beloved Companies Decide with Clarity of Purpose “Our iron-clad integrity and clarity guide the direction of our decisions.”

Decision 3: Beloved Companies Decide to Be Real “We have a spirited soul, humanity in our touch, and personality that’s all ours.”

Decision 4: Beloved Companies Decide to Be There “We must earn the right to our continued relationship with customers.”

Decision 5: Beloved Companies Decide to Say Sorry “We act with humility when things go wrong. We will make it right.”

Take Action to Become a Beloved Company in 2014:

• What story is emerging about who you are and what you value?
• Are your decisions reflecting what you intended?
• Do they indicate to employees and customers how much you honor them?
• When you make decisions that respect and honor customers, you will earn their respect—eventually, their love.
• Are your decisions compelling customers to tell others to try your products and services?
• Are your customers telling a beloved company story?

Jeanne Bliss is the President of CustomerBliss and co-founder of the Customer Experience Professionals Association. Jeanne is a customer loyalty speaker and business author. For more articles from Shep Hyken and his guest contributors, go to customerserviceblog.com