Companies are not fair to us – that’s the view of almost half the UK adult population. In 1980 only 14% thought this way; now 44% do according to nVision from Future Foundation. Nearly two decades after loyalty theories radically changed the business world, average loyalty has declined, whilst consumers have strengthened their recommendation and switching muscles. That’s a dangerous situation for companies to be in, so let’s look at what’s happened to customer loyalty.
The original loyalty premise
“Companies that want to improve their service quality should take a cue from manufacturing and focus on their own kind of scrap heap: customers who won't come back.” So begins the seminal article on customer loyalty, ‘Zero Defections: Quality Comes to Services’ by Fred Reichheld and Earl Sassar in Harvard Business Review 1990.