Customers understand that most businesses don’t really care about them, at all. The whole business thing has been industrialised and productized and turned into yet another profit center.

Therefore customers miss being missed, they miss the humanity of business. They miss being told that they matter, instead they are constantly told that they can’t get special treatment because every time they are told “our policy doesn’t allow that” by the sales person.

The best loyalty program is doing work that matters, work that places value on people, work that puts a human face on your business.

Smaller businesses have the ability to care more, to be closer to their customers than big companies. As your business grows, don’t lose the care-ability factor.

If you want to build a loyalty starter kit, here three essential tools to consider:

• Build something I would miss if you took it away;

If you want loyal customers, build something that they will miss if you are not around. It starts with satisfying a gap they have, satisfying a yearning they have. If they can easily go next door if you are not around, then you don’t matter to them.

• Focus not on prizes, the discounts or the transfer of value, but on recognition, on humanity, on people; 

Customers are humans first before they are customers, treat them as such. Don’t buy their loyalty with discounts and prizes.

• Care more.

Show them that you genuinely care. People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

In this great article David Graeber talks about “the prize of caring too much.” The more you care, the more human you are, and vice versa, the more human you are, the more you care.

Businesses need to care about their customers, that’s the best loyalty program it can have. A business with a human face is the foundation of loyalty.

Care more.