How Customer Loyalty Goes Beyond Customer Retention

In this clip from our eLearning series, Allison Hartsoe, CEO of Ambition Data, explores the customer decision journey and the point at which customers transition into the loyalty loop. The customer loyalty loop is a process that eliminates the consideration and evaluation stages in the customer journey. In the loyalty loop, customers no longer look for other competitors to buy from and become loyal to your brand.

Exploring the loyalty loop

In 2015 Harvard Business Review published a paper by David C. Edelman and Mark Singer titled, Competing on Customer Journeys. The article outlines the customer decision journey from the consideration stage to the evaluation stage, and finally the purchase. After that first purchase the potential for a customer to be pulled into the loyalty loop occurs as outlined in the image below.

Revised customer decision journey

So what's the difference between customer loyalty and retention?

The reason why brands need to distinguish between loyalty and retention is because the first trip through the decision journey does not necessarily put customers in the loyalty loop. A customer can still consider and evaluate other brands the next time they need to purchase a similar product. It is only when the consideration and elimination stage are forgone that you can truly consider that customer to be loyal to your brand.