Customer Loyalty vs. Consumer Loyalty

Are you kidding me?? Is what I can hear you all saying. Does he not realize that the customer is the consumer and the consumer is the customer?

Are you ready for this............Yep! I promise I have a reason for this obvious title to my post. But hold on...... do I always I have to be a customer if I am consuming a product? When my wife goes to the grocery store she is "customer" or buying certain products that she brings home for our family to eat. My son who doesn't buy any of it, consumes what we buy. According to Dictionary.com a consumer is defined, "One that consumes, especially one that acquires goods or services for direct use or ownership rather than for resale or use in production and manufacturing." Now let's look at what a customer is, "a person who purchases goods or services from another; buyer; patron." So you have one that buys the product and one that is a consumer of the product. Do you have to become a customer before you become a consumer? If this is the case, would it be helpful to create customer loyalty before you create consumer loyalty? I would say........yep!

How do you create customer loyalty? What are some things that you could do to foster repeat business, because, let's be honest, that is really the reason for creating customer loyalty. It starts with the CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE.

The other day my wife and I were in a furniture store looking for a desk for our office in our home. After walking around in the home office section for 10-15 minutes we found a desk that we liked a lot. After another 5- 10 minutes hoping someone would come help us answer some of our questions I finally had to go and ask for help. The thing that was really interesting was that their customer service reps were all standing around talking to one another and the counter they were standing at was maybe 10 feet away from us. Once we got someones attention we had a few questions that were answered in a "I can't believe they are bothering me with this stuff right now" kind of attitude. My wife is sensitive to this kind of stuff which I think is great! She can tell very quickly whether someone is genuinely wanting to help or just doing their job. After a few minutes we just said thank you and left. Do you think we will be going back there any time soon to buy something? Is it possible the next time we are at a friends house or in a doctors office that we will be sitting on a piece of furniture from this company? Granted we are not buying the couch or chair, but remember we are using it for "direct use". Will that make us want to go buy from them? Think about the logic here everyone! If you don't have a memorable customer experience will you become a loyal customer? I will leave that up to you. If you "consume" or use one of their products down the road will you be a loyal consumer? Can you see the affects the customer experience can have on people?

Why is customer loyalty important to you?
How would it change the way you look at customers if your number one priority was to make them happy?
Can a loyal customer become a loyal consumer without a great customer experience involved?