Devotion to Starbucks, Ritz-Carlton, or Harley-Davidson is not about a beverage, a hotel room, or transportation. It s about an experience an experience as profound and unmistakable as a teenager under the sway of first love. Granted, the product or outcome must be good, but it need not necessarily be great. Harley devotees grudgingly acknowledge that there really are technologically better bikes, but neither Suzuki nor BMW can match the gratification a Harley owner feels on a Sunday afternoon ride with other loyalists. Devotion springs from something other than simply the quality of the product.

Customers who are devoted to your internal unit or organization act substantially different than the customers who are simply loyal. The passionately devoted customer not only forgives you when you err but actually helps you correct what caused the mistake. They don t just recommend you; they assertively insist that their friends do business with you. They vehemently defend you when others are critical; and even if the reason for the criticism is accurate, they quickly dismiss it as an aberration or an exception.

But there is even more to devotion. Some devoted customers of Harley-Davidson tattoo the company logo on their bodies. Devoted guests of Ritz-Carlton wear the hotel's logoed clothes and have Ritz-Carlton cobalt-blue accessories in their homes. Devotion is a connection that becomes a part of the customer s identity and life expression.

The goal of Magnetic Service is to create an experience so compelling that it allures or draws the customer back, time and time again. Figuring out the components that give rise to passionate devotion is not a simple process. There is clearly a psycho-logic to appeal. Color, shape, sound and touch form an intricate pattern in the brain that links with learned preferences and spells attraction. There is also a social component at work. Somehow, privately watching the Green Bay Packers in the living room is not the same as elbowing your way through the bleachers with two hotdogs and cold beer. But organizations can t turn on a tape of a cheering mob or flood the store with the smell of motorcycle exhaust every time their customers enter the office, store, or department.

The authors' discovery of the seven powerful secrets of magnetic service came through a study of several "cult-like" brands those organizations that had a very large share of customers who behaved like groupies. They studied companies as diverse as USAA Insurance, Universal Studios, Ritz-Carlton Hotels, the "best in the world" Mansion at Turtle Creek Hotel and Restaurant, Sewell Village Cadillac, and Harley-Davidson Motor Company. Additionally, they interviewed managers, frontline employees, and some of the most devoted customers of such well-known brands as Marriott, Merrill Lynch, American Honda, ReMax, Pfizer, Holiday Inn, MBNA, Victoria s Secret, and Aurora Health Care.

In this study, the authors found patterns or practices that seemed to yield customer devotion. They distilled these patterns and practices into the seven secrets for creating passionately devoted customers that serve as the building blocks for this book.