Companies in today’s extremely competitive environment are facing the biggest challenge of winning and building customer loyalty.

The problem does not lie in the external environment; it lies within your organization. When it comes to customer loyalty strategy majority of the organizations take their focus to the outside when actually stable customer loyalty starts from your employees.

It boils down to treating your employees the way you want them to treat your customers. The heart of customer loyalty is usually is listening to what the customer wants and delivering to their expectations.

When the criteria lie in getting your employees to listen to your clients, it has to start with your leaders listening to their teams. Employees don’t want their leaders to just listen but to hear and understand them.

When a leader resolves to empathetic listening it usually culminates in the employee extending themselves for the organization by becoming more loyal, passionate and aligning themselves to the company’s mission. Often than not, this extends to your ultimate clients, making them equally loyal to your organization.

Employees today are looking for a job that incorporates more than just a pay check. More often than not employee retention is much easier when an employee feels that their being heard; be it their problems or their suggestions.

As a leader, empathetic listening is important in building a positive and trusting environment within your team and organization.

When you practice empathetic listening you will notice your sales force soon starts practicing that with your customers. Without practicing how to really listen to you will have your teams performing their tasks but not crossing the borders to put in that discretionary effort and it is this “want to” rather than “have to” which makes all the difference from being just good to being great.

Small changes within your organizations culture can encourage empathetic listening with your leaders and their teams. You can set up one on-one time with your employees. Listen to them, understand them. Set up systems to get honest, accurate feedback at every level. Make the human element of your organization as important as the financial or technical element. When you listen you learn and in the process you give your employees psychological air. This is the element that inspires loyalty and makes them go way beyond the 9 to 6 physical demands of their job profile.

As a leader of your objective is to gain customer loyalty; you have to not only focus on the activity outside but the activity around you relating to the people who serve your customers achieving the ultimate goal of customer loyalty. Seek first to understand and then to be understood. It is important to listen with the intent to understand and not with the intent to reply.

In empathic listening, you listen with your ears, but you also more importantly listen with your eyes and heart.

Leading Customer Loyalty is a one-day work session to learn the principles and practices that are needed to win the hearts of employees and customers. To drive this concept within your organization, register for the Leading Customer Loyalty workshop today.