There are many ways to kill cus­tomer en­thu­si­asm. Ne­glect, neg­li­gence, bore­dom and ir­rel­e­vance rank close to the top. Some busi­ness­es are com­plete­ly un­aware of the griev­ous harm that cus­tomers ex­pe­ri­ence at the hands of these sabo­teurs. Mer­ci­ful­ly, there are those busi­ness­es that un­der­take avoidant strate­gies so that nei­ther their brand nor their cus­tomers suf­fer.

Usu­al­ly, cus­tomer en­thu­si­asm wanes over time. It starts with a damp­en­ing of re­peat pur­chas­es, then turns in­to full-scale with­draw­al. For the busi­ness­es that no­tice the slip­page, there’s a chance at achiev­ing re­cov­ery and re­ju­ve­na­tion. For those that live in a state of un­aware­ness, the dam­age to cus­tomer re­la­tion­ships can be ir­repara­ble.

When a busi­ness ig­nores the ques­tions or queries post­ed by cus­tomers on its so­cial pages, that’s a form of ne­glect. Cus­tomers feel slight­ed, ig­nored and un­heard. Add this pat­tern to the dif­fi­cul­ty in con­tact­ing the busi­ness via tele­phone, or worse, via email and the stage will be set for cus­tomer tantrums.

Many busi­ness­es have so­cial pages that re­flect their use as one-way, rather than two-way, com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels. Some years ago, a new­ly mint­ed chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer men­tioned to me that the busi­ness that she led was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a mul­ti­tude of com­plaints on one of their so­cial pages. Her ques­tion to me was, “What should we do?” My re­sponse was that steps were need­ed to re­build trust via the same plat­form. I sug­gest­ed that she be­gin to ac­knowl­edge the com­plaints, un­der the ti­tle, “se­nior ex­ec­u­tive,” for a spe­cif­ic time, whilst in­di­cat­ing that an­oth­er of­fi­cer would fol­low up to pro­vide a so­lu­tion.

The im­me­di­ate re­sult? More com­plaints start­ed to roll in as soon as the strat­e­gy was im­ple­ment­ed.

What pre­cip­i­tat­ed this ef­fect? The fact that cus­tomers be­gan to ex­pe­ri­ence a re­sponse to their com­plaints. Ra­dio si­lence had been re­placed by ac­knowl­edge­ment, en­gage­ment and res­o­lu­tion. The best part of this sce­nario was that cus­tomers re­turned to their orig­i­nal posts and, in turn, ac­knowl­edged that they had ex­pe­ri­enced re­dress. Busi­ness­es should nev­er ig­nore com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels where cus­tomers ex­pect that their voic­es will be heard and heed­ed.

So, while the post­ing of rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion on so­cial chan­nels is wel­comed, some lev­el of re­spon­sive­ness to ques­tions, queries or in­quiries con­cern­ing the de­tails in posts would present a won­der­ful op­por­tu­ni­ty for cus­tomers to not feel the sting of ne­glect.

Some busi­ness­es are de­ter­mined to not be­come cul­tures of neg­li­gence. They are laser-fo­cused on build­ing strong in­ter­nal val­ue chains, where every de­part­ment is clear on its con­tri­bu­tion to stream­lined, seam­less and hic­cup-free cus­tomer jour­neys. When busi­ness­es do not fol­low this gold stan­dard, which un­der­pins ef­fi­ca­cious in­ter­nal op­er­at­ing ecosys­tems, the re­sult is a col­lec­tion of de­part­ments that func­tion at odds with each oth­er and cre­ate tur­bu­lence in the cus­tomer uni­verse.

Cus­tomer bore­dom should be re­gard­ed as a haz­ard that en­dan­gers a busi­ness. A dull and unin­spir­ing phys­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment, a clum­sy vir­tu­al en­vi­ron­ment and a slug­gish style of op­er­at­ing all con­flate to turn cus­tomers off. This means that the alche­my of the look, feel and, yes, even the en­vi­ron­men­tal aro­ma in the busi­ness should be care­ful­ly cu­rat­ed to de­liv­er a mul­ti-sen­so­ry ex­pe­ri­ence for the cus­tomer. Ever won­dered why per­fume stores or spe­cif­ic food brands have such a sen­so­ry ef­fect on the cus­tomer? It’s not hap­pen­stance; it’s ac­tu­al­ly sen­so­ry sci­ence.

One of the biggest killers of cus­tomer en­thu­si­asm is ir­rel­e­vance. When cus­tomers can find no com­pelling rea­son to main­tain a re­la­tion­ship with a busi­ness, that’s a red flag and a sig­nal that the busi­ness has lost its rel­e­vance to the cus­tomer. The biggest brands in the world thrive on stay­ing in lock step with their cus­tomers. The tru­ly ob­sessed brands main­tain their com­pet­i­tive edge by ac­tu­al­ly be­ing ahead of their cus­tomers. These busi­ness­es make it their busi­ness to know their cus­tomers, in­side out, so they can spot evolv­ing tastes and there­fore tai­lor of­fer­ings and busi­ness plat­forms to en­sure that cus­tomers nev­er look in the di­rec­tion of com­peti­tors.

One of the most com­pelling strate­gies that a busi­ness can de­ploy for sus­tain­ing en­thu­si­asm is to cre­ate a cus­tomer com­mu­ni­ty that re­ceives un­par­al­leled val­ue. Cu­rat­ing cus­tomer fer­vour is a long and time con­sum­ing jour­ney, that on­ly those busi­ness­es that are in­tent on pre­serv­ing cus­tomer loy­al­ty will opt to un­der­take.

The first ques­tion is, “How many busi­ness­es are ready to make the jour­ney to sus­tain cus­tomer en­thu­si­asm?” The sec­ond and more im­por­tant ques­tion will be, “How many busi­ness­es would be will­ing to go be­yond cus­tomer en­thu­si­asm, to earn cus­tomer fer­vour?”