Evergreen: Cultivate the Enduring Customer Loyalty That Keeps Your Business Thriving

This book, "Evergreen," is full of practical tips and action steps you can use to strengthen relationships with your customers. You'll learn how to make the most of loyalty and reward programs. You'll find out when you should "fire" a customer who's sapping your time and energy, and how to make social media meaningful and engaging for your customers.

In short, you're going to learn how to get new customers and, more importantly, how to keep the ones you have. In return, you're more likely to experience lasting growth and higher profitability, two things everyone in the business world wants to see.

If you're consistently losing customers and you want to figure out why, or you want to learn how to strengthen bonds with the customers you've got, this book is for you. It's written for CEOs, middle managers, sales professionals, entrepreneurs, and anyone who wants to learn how to be more customer-centric.

Noah Fleming is a strategic marketing expert and the CEO of Fleming Consulting and Company. He's coached and consulted for thousands of business owners, is an expert blogger at Fast Company, ;and a guest blogger for The Globe and Mail's Report on Business.

So, keep listening to find out why defining your organization as a superhero will help you discover its true identity, some questions you should ask before building a customer community, and how to redesign your loyalty program so it actually builds loyalty.

"Evergreen" is divided into two parts, with 11 chapters.

Fleming starts the book by debunking a popular myth in business: that new customers will always save your business. The truth is, they won't – not by a long shot. You can have a great customer acquisition strategy that really works, but if you can't hang on to these people, all you're doing is spinning your wheels. Constantly looking for new customers is much more expensive than investing in the customers you already have.

Fleming explains why searching for new customers is so appealing for businesses. It's sexy. It's the thrill of the chase, and you get instant gratification when your social media or advertising campaign pays off. It's exciting, while customer retention just isn't.

But if customer acquisition is like chasing after a first date, then retention is more like true love, the kind that lasts.

To build this kind of relationship, you have to focus on three elements, which Fleming calls the Three Cs. These are character, community and content. In evergreen companies, these three elements work in harmony with each other. And you need all three in order to succeed long-term.

Let's take a closer look at the Three Cs, starting with character. And we'll begin with a story that can be told in one sentence.

Two guys got their start putting computers together in a garage and they proceeded to build one of the largest and most successful companies ever.

Most of us know this legendary story by heart – it's the story of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, two of the three founders of Apple Computers.

Every business has a story, but many organizations underestimate how powerful their story can be in the eyes of customers. Your story is a critical part of your organization's character. And Fleming says companies that develop and live by the character they define connect with their customers on a deeper and more meaningful level than those who don't.

What you sell is often secondary to why you sell it. And when you can match up how you see yourself, how you see the customer, and how the customer sees you, you can find the sweet spot that's the beginning of customer loyalty.

So, how do you build your company's character?

One tip is to use Facebook in a meaningful way. Instead of using the platform to publicize what Fleming calls the "Facebook You," use it to showcase the "Real You." Your goal is to be authentic. And to do this, you have to have to figure out who you are and what you stand for. Fleming gives us a five-step process to do this.

First, write out your company story. Explain why the company was started, and what the original aspirations were. Don't leave out details, but don't over-think it either.

Next, define your superhero. By this, Fleming means that you need to compare your company to a superhero. Superheroes are fascinating and larger-than-life, and they keep us interested because we're always wondering, "What are they going to do next?"

To define your company's superhero, ask yourself, "What is our super power? What does our organization do better than anyone else? What challenges did we overcome to get where we are today? What adventures did we have?"

Write a short paragraph about your organization, and have some fun with it. You now have a character that represents your organization.

Your next step is to build purpose for this character's actions. Think about these questions. Who are you, and what do you want to be known for? What's your larger-than-life purpose? Who are your enemies?

Write a paragraph that defines why you do what you do.

Step four is to create an avatar for your character. This is the person who's living your company story. Try to picture them. Who is this person? What is their personality? Write a description of your avatar in 100 words or less.

Your last step is an important one. You're going to imagine that your company's character and your ideal customer meet for the first time. What do they say to each other? How do they introduce themselves? What would they talk about?

This exercise might seem silly, but Fleming says if you take the time to do it, you might be surprised at what you uncover about your organization, and how you want it to be seen.

Community is the second "C" in the Three C approach. Evergreen companies go to great lengths to build customer communities, and Fleming is quick to point out that this isn't easy to do. But if you put in the time and effort, your community will become the linchpin of customer loyalty, and have a serious competitive advantage.

Fleming outlines four steps to building your community. The first is to define your strategy. To do this, ask yourself, "What are your long-term objectives for your business? How could a customer community help you reach those objectives?"

You should also identify the key stakeholders and decision makers that need to be onboard with the community-building strategy. Are these people, and everyone else in the organization, committed to your community objectives?

The three other steps in this process will help you create a plan for building a customer community in your organization.

The last "C" in Fleming's Three C approach is content.

When you hear the word "content" you might first think that Fleming is talking about articles, blog posts, and tweets. But he urges you to think of content as what your company does or sells, as well as all the digital exchanges with your customers. It's the experience you're creating and the value you provide.

When you know your content, you understand the business you're really in.

It's important not to get too hasty with content. Too much content isn't good for you, or your customer, and you find out why in this chapter.

In part two, Fleming shows you how to take everything you just learned and, to stick with his tree analogy, make it grow. Here you learn how to become more familiar with your customers, how to create a great customer loyalty plan and make it work, how to fire bad customers, and how to collect customer data that's actually useful.

There are some fascinating tips in part two, but we think the chapter on loyalty programs is particularly valuable. Loyalty programs are a dime a dozen these days, and they're easy to get wrong. But when you get them right, they can really delight and engage your customers. They can increase customer retention and how often they buy from you, and can help you better understand who these people are.

To create a successful loyalty program, start by building a ladder.

Here's what Fleming means by this. Many organizations have loyalty programs where if you spend a dollar, you get a point. And for every X hundred points, you earn some kind of reward. That's all well and good, but that's also all there is. There's nowhere for the customer to go after that.

Great loyalty programs have a ladder with many rungs the customer can climb. And the higher they climb, the more they're engaged and committed to your organization.

What you need to do first is prioritize status over stuff. In the book "Drive – The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us," author Daniel Pink inadvertently shows us why loyalty programs don't work when he talks about employee motivation.

Most organizations motivate employees with extrinsic, or external, rewards, like bonuses. But what really drives people to do great work are intrinsic rewards, like autonomy, mastery and purpose.

Now apply that concept to loyalty programs. Any organization can offer their customers extrinsic rewards like discounts or free stuff. But what would happen if you offered your customers intrinsic rewards, like status and recognition? What if you designed your loyalty program around the simple concept that people often want what they can't have?

Here's a great example of this.

One of Fleming's small business clients is a restaurant. Each month, the owner attaches a supplementary dining menu to the main menu. But only loyalty members can order off the special menu. No exceptions. And he's very serious about it.

Has this upset some customers? You bet. But the restaurant signs up hundreds of new members each time they run the promotion, even though people have to pay $20 to join.

But get this. In their welcome packet, new members get a $20 gift certificate for a future meal. And the owner has discovered that when they use this gift certificate, these customers spend 70 percent more than they did on their original purchase.

This same restaurant owner also created the Mug Club for craft beer lovers. Customers pay $79 to join, but they get their own mug on display at the restaurant, a bronze plaque with their name, extra beer with every purchase, and many other benefits.

He sold out in a matter of days, and he now has a waiting list of people who want to join. Plus, the people already in the club don't want to give up their spots, so they keep renewing.

You can apply this to your own organization. How could you give your customers more status and recognition with a loyalty program? How could you give them something that others can't have?

As in all the chapters in the book, Fleming provides clear steps that guide you through the process of designing a great customer loyalty program.

The rest of "Evergreen" continues in the same vein. You'll learn how to identify your best customers and how to find more of them, how to collect data that you can use to change customer behavior, and how to bring back customers who've walked away from your organization.

There's also a valuable chapter on new customers: how to bring them in, how to create loyalty from the first transaction, and how to on-board them to your company.

So, what's our last word on "Evergreen?"

We loved this book, for several reasons.

First, it's fun. Fleming's writing style is witty and conversational. It also feels really personal. You feel like you're getting some great advice from a trusted friend while the two of you share a drink at the local pub. It's easy to learn from, because you won't want to stop reading.

Another reason we loved "Evergreen" is that it's full of really valuable information on rethinking how you approach customer service. We've only covered a fraction of what's in it here. Fleming's advice is a great mix of easy tips you can apply starting tomorrow and long-term strategies that will take months to implement.

We also appreciate Fleming's fresh examples. We've read about the customer-centric approach of companies like Southwest Airlines and Amazon a thousand times. And these tried-and-true stories do get a nod in the book.

But Fleming does a great job of finding plenty of new examples to illustrate his points. Many of these come from small and medium-sized companies, showing how smaller organizations can apply the techniques. And, they're also fun to read.

This is the kind of book you can open up to any page and learn something new. So, if you're ready to rethink how you approach customer service, and you want clear, practical advice for building real relationships with your customers, don't miss this book.

All in all, "Evergreen" gets an enthusiastic "thumbs up" from us.

"Evergreen," by Noah Fleming, is published by AMACOM.

That's the end of this episode of Book Insights. Thanks for listening.