Linda posted on March 26, 2009 09:12
I learned something yesterday about customer loyalty and wanted to share it with you today.
Yesterday, I was one of the participants in the MDA Lock Up in East Lansing. The proof is in the picture I posted with this post.
You are probably wondering what that has to do with customer loyalty, but read on!
If you aren't familiar with how these lock ups work, the basic idea is that I agree to be locked up, and then solicit my friends, customers, vendors, co-workers and acquaintances for donations to the cause, in this case the Muscular Dystrophy Association. It's pretty easy to do, as they have tools for creating a donation website that is very easy to figure out, and you can upload your contact list and send an email quickly and easily asking everyone's help to bail you out.
So, I agreed to participate two months ago and, except for the article about it that I put in my March newsletter, did very little until two days before the lock up. But in spite of that, I had raised almost $1000 when the sheriff's deputy (yes for real) came to take me to jail.
I made a couple of phone calls from jail, and had a couple of promises of additional online donations, and my cell phone battery was very low. So I had some bread and water - well, it was really water, but it was far from bread, thanks to the folks at Dublin Square - and asked to be released, still far short of the suggested goal of $1600. I was a bit down, but the economy isn't great, so I was ready to move on to other business.
When I returned to my office, I decided to hop online to see if any of those promised donations had been made. Much to my amazement, there was an unexpected contribution from one of my vendors of $800! I almost fell off of my chair and my cry of amazement was heard throughout the entire office.
So what does that have to do with customer loyalty? Well, I did not even send an email to this vendor, and I know that she doesn't waste time on facebook, twitter or LinkedIn, so I can only assume that the only way she knew about this was that she read it in my newsletter. I am grateful that she values me and the business relationship that she and I have enough to take the time to go online and make such a generous donation. In just a few minutes of her time, she has made me feel extremely valued as a client. In return, I have increased loyalty to her. I would sooner cut off my arm than discontinue our business relationship!
So the big lesson for me is that I can build the same type of loyalty with my clients by supporting the causes that are important to them when the opportunity arises. Of course, I knew that on some level, but yesterday's lesson has burned it into my mind and it will not be forgotten.
Thanks, Robin and everyone else who made a donation towards my bail. As of this post, I raised a total of $2,035, much of which will stay in our own community.