Ron Shevlin makes an interesting point on this topic. He writes:
...in my inbox, comes an article from a company called Vox that poses the question “Is customer loyalty a thing of the past?”and claims that “old business tactics don’t work on today’s savvy customers.” The article goes on to say: Today’s customers don’t hesitate to switch where they do business if they feel their expectations aren’t being met. In fact a recent survey conducted by Thunderhead, found that 61% of insurance, and 63% of banking customers polled planned to switch providers during the next year. The reasons? 76% want more personalized options when it comes to how providers communicate with them.
The reason, in my opinion, is impacted by — but not caused by — the Internet. No, the root cause of this goes back well before the advent of the Internet, and social media, and all the other so-called “disruptive” technologies that some people like to rant about.
Instead, the reason is rooted more in societal changes and globalization. As we’ve become a more affluent and highly educated society, we’ve had an increasing desire to have more control over our lives. It’s an insult to our intelligence to think that we can’t make decisions for ourselves and that someone else has to tell us what products and services to use. Globalization, however, has had a negating impact on that feeling. As news from around the world reaches us daily, hourly, and now on the minute, we’ve increasingly felt that things are happening so fast that we’re losing control of what goes on around us.
Switching providers — whether it’s banks or firms from other industries — is an act of independence. We switch because we can. We switch to make a statement. We switch to demonstrate that WE are control of our lives and our business relationships.
Successful firms approach customer relationships as just that — relationships. A two-way street. It goes far beyond “customization” and “personalization”."
My View: I had a client, B.S. Nagesh of Shoppers' Stop, a leading retailer in India. telling me once( I used to run their very successful loyalty program - First Citizen) - "we need to be loyal to our customers more than they being loyal to us!" . That's the truth about loyalty. We need to create enough value, stay true to building relationships which is a two-way street, build enough reasons for our customers to "feel cared", then customers show their loyalty to companies!Loyalty is not dead. Loyalty has to be earned!