Acknowledging Consumer Gratitude: Leveraging the Voice of the Consumer to Increase Loyalty

When consumers’ purchase experiences end in dissatisfaction, complaints are often triggered and most customer-oriented firms invest heavily in recovery with hopes of addressing their complaints and restoring loyalty. While addressing complaints is certainly a critical customer service strategy, it is imperative that these efforts don’t detract from investments in maintaining relationships with the most satisfied customers. In fact, evidence from companies like Starbucks suggests that the revenue differential between highly satisfied and satisfied customers dwarfs that of the difference between unsatisfied and satisfied customers (see Figure 1). More specifically, highly satisfied customers spend 3.4 times more over their lifetime than satisfied customers (Moon and Quelch 2006). Data like these suggest that the savvy manager would dedicate more effort to managing relationships with their most satisfied consumers. Traditionally, most efforts focused on managing these relationships have centered on moments of truth during the core service experience. While these efforts help build baseline satisfaction levels with a focus on the service delivery stage of the purchase journey, they ignore post-purchase stages of the journey, which offer a great opportunity to build the relationship outside of the service facility. By leveraging ongoing consumer research efforts, firms can create new moments of truth focused on dialogue with their best customers. More specifically, when these most satisfied customers reply positively to customer satisfaction assessments, these words of praise traditionally are documented and then quickly forgotten. We contend that these words of praise represent an opportunity for service firms to create a new moment of truth focused on acknowledging the feedback and extending the dialogue with their best customers. Ultimately, these relational investments will increase bonds with their best customers and result in increased patronage.