Building A Winning Culture

It took retail giant Costco less than thirty years to become the second largest retailer in the United States and the seventh largest in the world— without advertising. How? By growing a worldwide base of intensely loyal customers and employees, many of whom wouldn’t shop or work anywhere else.The highest level of engagement is loyalty.Loyal workers and customer loyalty programs are worth their weight in gold. A talented worker who gives her heart and mind to your enterprise can generate ten- or a hundred- or a thousand-fold more in revenue and goodwill than she will ever cost you. A customer who gives you a lifetime of return business and word-of-mouth support is the ultimate competitive lever you can use to move the world.

The older paradigm was "customer and employee satisfaction." It’s great to have satisfied customers and employees, but it’s no longer enough. The new paradigm is "intense loyalty," and shifting to that paradigm is the job you must do now.

Most customer loyalty programs don’t lead to meaningful change. They are often poorly designed, too long, and biased. The questions are frequently crafted to get certain answers, which makes the resulting data inaccurate. Many of the questions are centered less on customer issues and more on "How did we do?"

How do you get the unshakable loyalty of sixty million people who gladly fork over a membership fee every year to shop in a warehouse called Costco? The answer, according to Harvard professor and veteran Bain consultant Fred Reichheld, is "to treat them the way you would want to be treated." This principle, known as the Golden Rule, is laughably simple—and it works. Reichheld cites Colleen Barrett, president emeritus of wildly successful Southwest Airlines: "Practicing the Golden Rule is integral to everything we do." Andy Taylor, executive chairman of Enterprise,the most prosperous rental-car company in the world, says, "The only way to grow is to treat customers so well they come back for more and tell their friends about us." Here’s just one example of Enterprise’s appreciation of the Golden Rule: A friend of ours on a business trip got stranded in a small town in the American Midwest. His plane was canceled, and it was long past closing time for the only rental-car office at the tiny airport, but he thought he’d try the door. A smiling young man in a white shirt and tie opened it. He was an Enterprise employee and quickly signed out the last rental car in town to our friend.

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Joseph Turner is a part time freelance writer and full time employee at FranklinCovey Middle East. http://www.franklincoveyme.com/