When it comes to winning over customers and retaining them as fervent outspoken followers, there are a few home truths every entrepreneur must know.

It is always tempting to solve a business’ problems from the top. After all, it is ingrained in us from an early age – start at the top and work your way down.

Yet when it comes to serving customers or clients, there is a catastrophic flaw in this approach.

No matter how well you improve and enhance the layers at the top, they still rest on upon those bottom layers. And if the bottom layers are rotten or wonky, the whole structure remains at risk of collapse.

The customer needs hierarchy

We are all only human, and as humans, we share the same basic needs.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs, with its five levels, is sometimes used to express how basic and alike we all are:

• 5. Self-actualisation: As in achieving one’s full potential
• 4. Esteem: Self-respect, confidence and status
• 3. Love and belonging: Family, friendship and community
• 2. Safety needs: Personal security, health, and employment
• 1. Physiological needs: Air, food, water and shelter

Comparing the above to customer experience, suggests US consulting firm Strategex, looks something like this:

• 4. Help customer win: Effectively engage and collaborate
• 3. Provide great service: Be responsive and attentive
• 2. Supply the expected: Reliable delivery
• 1. The foundation: Trust and integrity

Getting priorities right

It sounds logical, basic even: prioritise the biggest needs first.

Yet as both successful entrepreneurs and advisors suggest, it can be harder to achieve in practice.

“The more times you fail in the lower tiers of the pyramid, the more likely your company experiences the dreaded customer churn,” Strategex VP Kay Cruse explains.

Sir Richard Branson similarly focuses on the lower level of the pyramid in his famous quote: “The key is to set realistic customer expectations, and then not to just meet them, but to exceed them – preferably in unexpected and helpful ways.”

The Virgin founder is no doubt very mindful that customers are happy to be part of the churn that costs businesses so much.

Entrepreneurs are not alone in realising that customers now expect more. The NSW Government has put customer experience front and centre of its public policy, making customer experience (CX) transformation a key strategic target, and even created a ministerial role to oversee it.

Changing goalposts

It is important to note that building customer loyalty doesn’t happen from a steady base. The goalposts are constantly moving.

“Customer loyalty and retention are in decline,” screamed a Forbes headline in 2019. And that was before the pandemic upended our lives and caused us to re-evaluate our values and priorities.

“Specifically, two-thirds of consumers surveyed said they are more likely to switch to the competitor that provides the best customer service or experience.”

Such fickleness demands adaptability and flexibility on the part of businesses in order to maintain relevance.

However, while customer expectations are constantly changing, the approach to turning them into your biggest fans remains the same: get your priorities right and start at the bottom of the hierarchy of needs.

Build that trust and integrity first, and then work your way up the hierarchy. Because the longevity and stability of every structure is dependent on it having strong foundations.

This post first appeared on Business Builders Feb 2022 and was updated March 2025.

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