Everyone is accountable for customer loyalty.

Everyone.

No-compromise.

Yes, customer loyalty begins with leadership and that’s where the problem can begin.

Leaders are notorious for going on those infamous rampages when a customer quits the salon/spa or when customer retention rates go critical. The no-compromise question to ask is, “Where is the accountability and how far down in the salon/spa does that accountability go?” Playing the blame game is a compromise and totally unacceptable.

The no-compromise leader places accountability for customer loyalty in the hands of every company employee.

It cannot be any other way.

For this level of accountability to exist, employees need to understand just how accountable they are. What I’m talking about here is a team-based business culture.

In a team-based business culture, ALL employees feel the pain of a lost customer. They feel the pain when a customer has a problem that could have been avoided.

RELATED: To learn more about what a team-based culture can do for your salon or spa's bottomline, download our FREE Team-Based Pay white paper report.

This is what an “ownership culture” functions like. It’s when employees are accountable to the numbers of the business, and most importantly, to the critical numbers that drive customer loyalty.

Here are 11 do-it-now strategies you can use to drive accountability and the customer loyalty business outcome:

• No entitlements: Tie raises, bonus payouts and employee incentives to your customer loyalty critical numbers.


• Define what they’re accountable for doing: If you don’t have one already, create an ongoing training and coaching program that specifically targets every employee’s accountability to customer loyalty.


• Ensure that your information flow systems are working: You cannot hold anyone accountable if they don’t have access to what’s going on. Leadership cannot compromise or ignore its accountability to maintain fast and furious information flow.


• Own it when you fail to be accountable: The no-compromise leader always takes the high … and the right … road. You’ll only gain respect by doing so.


• Never hesitate to engage issues: You must address behavior or performance that negatively impacts customer loyalty.


• Know when it’s time to give someone a “career opportunity": Never hesitate to terminate an employee who, after coaching and corrective measures have been given, continues to compromise customer loyalty. Failure to act sends all the wrong messages to the rest of the staff.


• Make time: Schedule time to engage and talk to your customers about the service and quality they receive from your company. Too many owners just don’t do this and lose touch with what their clients are really thinking. Jet Blues’ CEO and founder, David Neeleman, takes a no-compromise accountability approach to assessing his airline’s customer loyalty level. Neeleman can be found regularly servicing and talking to customers on board flights. That’s right, the CEO of the company makes it a point to work the beverage cart on flights to talk to customers. He simply asks, “How is Jet Blue doing and what can we do better?” That’s powerful stuff. And when he addresses issues with his leadership team, he’s talking based on his personal interaction with customers.


• Monitoring quality: Establish a customer quality assurance team to monitor customer loyalty and to provide monthly feedback for the entire company.


• Earn your return on the systems you create: What are you doing to hold staff accountable for following those systems? Where are the challenges? What are the fixes? How long will it take? What needs to change? Do you need to change?


• Right bus … wrong seat: In most cases, you’ll be saving that employee by reassigning him to a different position. If the employee is in over his head, reassigning or terminating, although tough, is actually helping the individual in the long run.


• Exemplify your commitment to customer loyalty: You're the leader. What you say, how you say it, your behavior and your commitment to extraordinary customer loyalty sets the focus and tone for your entire salon/spa.