Are Your Customers Dogs or Cats?

1st let’s look at some general characteristics of these two animals.

Dogs are:

• Always happy to see you, if you are gone for five minutes or five hours, they act as if you are the prodigal son returning.
• Loyal to a fault.  They will stick by you through good times and bad.
• Trainable.
• Defenders.  Better not mess with someone who has a dog.

Cats are:

• Coy.  They usually act as if they don’t care if you are around or gone for a month.
• Self-Centered. Their willingness to do what you want begins with getting what they want first.
• ….that’s about all I can think of.

Businesses often treat their customers like dogs.  They think that their customers are customers for life and that they can train them to do what they want.

However most customers are cat like.  Loyalty is based on how you treat them.  And every interaction is an opportunity to lose that relationship or keep it going.

The “What’s In It For Me” attitude of a cat is also the common attitude for most customers.

This demands businesses to reverse their marketing outreach to be customer focused instead of self focused.

Take some time to evaluate your attitude and actions with your customers and you’ll probably find a few areas to improve.