“Brand loyalty is very much like an onion. It has layers and a core. The core is the user who will stick with you until the very end.” Edward Artzt, former CEO, Procter and Gamble.

Company executives have learnt this at their expense. Nowadays, a glance at the local newspapers will give you an idea of how companies believe that bargains are what will keep the customers loyal. But the real issue is elsewhere; According to a Conference Board study, customer loyalty is the number one issue on the minds of CEOs. The role of loyalty as a powerful profit generator is increasingly being recognized. In the Conference Board research, a total of 37% of CEOs from North America, Europe and Asia, identified customer retention and loyalty as the greatest management challenge facing their companies. The harder companies work to make products cheaper and better, the less they seem to impress their customers.

The American Customer Satisfaction Index, the definitive benchmark of how buyers feel about what business is selling them, will reach its 10-year anniversary this fall. According to an article by William C. Taylor in the New York Times, for business - the index measures satisfaction for 200 companies in 40 industries - it is hardly a cause for celebration. Some scores have risen in the last few years, but many industries and companies rate lower today than they did in 1994, and the index is down over all.

A decade ago, on a scale of 0 to 100, the overall index was 74.8. The most recent score was 74.4. Back then, the airline industry was at 72; the most recent score was 66. Telecommunications was at 81; the most recent score was 71. Personal computers were at 78; the most recent score was 72.

The company with the highest index rating, a 90, is H. J. Heinz - no one’s idea of a cutting-edge enterprise, but a venerable producer of familiar foodstuffs like ketchup and pork and beans. A decade ago, its rating was 89. Meanwhile, the most recent score for Hewlett-Packard, Silicon Valley’s fabled innovator, was 70, down from 78 in 1994.

The problem? Too many companies confuse selling clever gadgets at good prices with delighting customers. When so many products get cheaper every year, offering customers a great bargain will not necessarily win their loyalty. Someone else is bound to offer a better bargain, and besides, most customers have come to expect good deals. “Price has an effect on whether you buy or not,” Dr. Claes Fornell, a professor at the University of Michigan Business School and the creator of the satisfaction index, says. “It has less of an impact on whether you’re satisfied or not.”

<B>STAR OF THE WEEK</B>

I have been calling in-house call centers, SBM, Courts, Harel Mallac, Mauritius Telecom, Air Mauritius, among others. The criteria used to evaluate these call centres were the waiting time, the verbal handshake (opening greeting), how knowledgeable the agents were, how proactive they were (if solutions were found if ever there was a problem), if they personalized the call and finally the call closure. After analysis of the points allocated, I wish to congratulate those people who set up the SBM call centre. Try calling 2070111; the phone is picked within seconds and never after 3 rings. Though the agents could have more ‘smile’ in their voice at times, it is highly laudable for a call centre to have such a quick response time and surely a very low abandonment call rate. Moreover the agents had good product knowledge.

<B>CABBAGE OF THE WEEK</B>

At Kentucky Fried Chicken, Riche Terre on a Sunday evening, the counter salesperson told me that I had to wait 15 minutes for the food I had ordered; the reason? “We do not have many customers on Sundays!” My son wanted a Chicky Fun Meal; too bad, for some reasons, he could not have it. I could not have what I wanted and resorted to eating two meager portions of chicken wings. As for the 15 or so customers I saw ordering whilst eating in the food court, they had the same treatment. By the way, it takes a lot to go inside Jumbo Riche Terre on Sundays; the place is sparsely lit and the road leading to the hypermarket is somber to say the least.