5 Questions Retailers Must Tackle to Attract and Retain Customers

In some cases when the issue is big enough, Southwest sends out something its calls "Luv Bucks," which customers can use towards purchasing another flight. In what I call an "everyday" company, you have a financial person who is looking at the cost of those Luv Bucks and saying, "Why would we do that?" This is too expensive. But for Southwest Airlines, those Luv Bucks actually pay off and grow its business. Being proactive in reaching out to customers first has resulted in 70 percent of Southwest's customers bringing other people with them in repeat flights. The net positive revenue increase of its Luv Bucks program exceeded $1.7 million in 2011.

4. How do you stay connected and relevant with customers? A lot of companies view social media as a campaign, as something they need to go get. They think of social media as another piece of their marketing strategy. Contrast this with what most "beloved companies" (a term that I use to define businesses where an emotional and strong connection with employees and customers grows the business) do, which is to engage social media as a way to continue and advance a two-way, transparent dialog between themselves and customers.

Zappos.com, for example, started using Twitter before a lot of other companies. In fact, Tony Hsieh, Zappos’ CEO, and I were at dinner and he was tweeting away. I asked him, "Tony, what are you doing?" He told me, "Jeanne, you have to do this Twitter thing. I'm telling somebody where we are for dinner." Well, the way that Zappos started out and why it has so many followers is that it didn't use these Twitter conversations to send marketing messages, but to create relationships.

Hsieh's early tweets were things like, "I'm at the barbershop." Those tweets created a personal connection between the world reading them and the people at Zappos — they call themselves "Zapponians." People reading Zappos’ tweets connect with the brand, and as a result it's built a customer base because consumers want to buy products and services from individuals they can relate to.