My son (9), daughter (6) and I love to reward ourselves at the end of a Saturday morning Park Run with ice cream from McDonalds.

There are 2 McDonalds locations close to our house. One is amazing. I love to watch their staff work quickly and efficiently to provide good food and customer service! The location is very busy but is kept extremely clean.

The second McDonalds restaurant is not so good. Experiences over the past few years have cemented my opinions. I have also verified this with other locals.

So which McDonalds restaurant do we attend the most?

Surprisingly the second because of habit and the location being more accessible on our journey home. This restaurant would assume we are loyal customers!

This restaurant would assume we are loyal customers!

Customer loyalty is defined as:

“result of consistently positive emotional experience, physical attribute-based satisfaction and perceived value of an experience, which includes the product or services.result of consistently positive emotional experience, physical attribute-based satisfaction and perceived value of an experience, which includes the product or services”.

There is an interesting HBR Article on Why Customer Loyalty is Overrated. Despite the great investment made to market and brand themselves, many of their customers, it turns out, make most purchase decisions almost automatically. They look for what’s familiar and easy to purchase.

Whether we work for Government, Enterprises or Small Business, we all have customers!

The HBR article highlights the initial ease of use of a product can lead to a habit which will ultimately lead to its success.

Each time we chose a product, it gains advantage over its competitors that we did not choose.

So whether your customers are voters (Government), B2B Customers or Consumers, don’t assume that the customers you have are loyal. They may only be using you out of habit 🙂