The customer satisfaction movement began nearly 20 years ago with Tom Peters’ classic book, “In Search of Excellence.” This book spawned hundreds of copycat books, seminars and millions of dollars spent on customer satisfaction campaigns. Despite all the money and effort, disciples of customer satisfaction don’t see any more loyalty today than they did 20 years ago because customer satisfaction alone will not create customer loyalty.
Loyalty and satisfaction are two different things. Customer satisfaction is an opinion. The only activity associated with customer satisfaction is the completion …