Customer Loyalty: Hey, Stick Around for a While!

Customer loyalty has increased substantially to the brands customers opt to engage with over the years. Interestingly, contrary to warnings by many businesspeople, we find that Millennials are among the most loyal customers across generational cohorts, behind only the dwindling Silent Generation. Striving for loyalty across generational cohorts is also powerful. We drive home this point, started in the complaint chapter, by focusing on the “service recovery paradox”—customers who experience a problem with a product or service but receive effective complaint management end up with stronger-than-average loyalty, even stronger than customers with a problem-free experience. As a caution, we also highlight why many popularized alternative measures of customer loyalty, like the Net Promoter Score™, are scientifically flawed.