Do your customers feel the love? Not the ho-hum, check-the-“satisfied”-box-on-the-survey kind of love. We’re talking about the kind of warm-and-fuzzies that inspire spontaneous thank you letters. If your customers aren’t head-over-heels gaga about you, then you’ve got work to do, says Jeanne Bliss, author of Chief Customer Officer: Getting Past Lip Service to Passionate Action. She offers these quick tips for getting your customers to love you.

• Eliminate the customer obstacle course. Who does the customer call? Sales? Operations? Customer service? It is in these handoffs that customer failures occur. Make it clear how customers can do business with you in a way that’s actually beneficial to them.
• Fix the problems. Customer satisfaction research has told us how we can improve, but we haven’t acted on the information. Customers read this lack of action as a lack of respect. Don’t talk a good game: address the top 10 issues bugging customers.
• Deliver what you promise. From missed deliveries to unwieldy warranty claims, customers are annoyed and aggravated — and they’re telling everyone they know.
• When you make a mistake, right the wrong. If you’ve got egg on your face, admit it. Then right the wrong. There’s nothing more frustrating to customers than a company that won’t admit it faltered.
• Work to believe. Very little respect remains after a customer is put through the third degree when they need to return a product, put in a claim, or use the warranty service. Suspend the cynicism and work to believe your customers. Most are going to honestly relay what is happening to them with your product or service.

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