I used to think that wanting your customers to love you was an unrealistic goal. But I was proved wrong last week.
On Instagram, Nadia Lim, one of the founders of My Food Bag posted a love letter she had received from one of her customers (who was aircrew on a flight she was taking). In the letter, the customer professed her love of My Food Bag and how it has changed her life. It seemed to me that receiving a customer love letter must be the ultimate in customer loyalty. When a customer feels so strongly about your company and the positive impact it has in their life, that they write you a letter (on a sick bag no less!) then pretty much you have reached loyalty nirvana.
Which is a quite funny really because I’ve never actually worked for a company that uses customers love letters as a metric for how successful they are being in building customer loyalty. Most often they use measures like Net Promoter Score (NPS), active members, points issued & redeemed or customer retention. I know those measures make logical sense, look good on a lean canvas and take up a table in the monthly report. But I think adding in a more emotional metric would be a useful addition. Not only would it paint a colourful picture for employees on what is resonating for customers (and the difference they are making) but it is just good for business. How we feel about a company will determine how likely we are to use them again, use them more or tell people about them.
If you’re not convinced that customer love should be one of your goals, that’s cool. I just think it invites so much more creativity from your employees than a goal of “Increase NPS to 14”. But maybe that’s just me.