“Loyalty is not about a customer being loyal to you. It’s about you being loyal to the customer.”

John Bartold delivered this quote at a retail conference two years
ago. In our opinion, Mr. Bartold, contributing editor to Colloquoy, a
magazine and web site devoted to loyalty, is a person well worth
considering.

In the past six months, we have seen several companies struggling
with loyalty program issues – how to frame them and how to improve them.

The key point is for a company to be loyal to their customers, to
know the customers as individuals and to serve up just what the
customer wants.

My favorite local restaurant is Harry’s Country Club, and they know how to create loyalty.

The servers know my name. They know
what I like. And Ashley, one of my favorite servers, will steer me away
from daily specials that she doesn’t think I will like.

But, you can argue, that it’s a small business and they can manage on
this scale. You can argue that huge businesses cannot manage the same intimate
relationship with millions of customers.

I disagree that size is the barrier.

Amazon.com knows every product that I have ever purchased and they
constantly provide me with pre-release offers on books by authors I
like.

Amazon and Harry’s do exactly the same thing. They both know me.
And, they both are loyal to me by steering me to the products I’ll
likely choose.