If you want to know whether your customers are loyal, there are five places you can look. These behaviors — called “loyalty behaviors—are like breadcrumbs that customers leave that tell you whether they are loyal to you . . . or not. These are five behaviors you want to excel in! How would your company fare in each?

1. Repeat purchases. 

Do you track your customers’ purchases? Do you know if they continue to buy from you after the first sale? If customers are not coming back, do you know why?

2. Recommendations.

Do your customers recommend you to their friends and family? Have you ever asked? A simple print or email survey can tell you a lot. 

3. Forgiveness. 

If a mistake comes to your attention, be quick to apologize and make things right. Send a letter (always a card or letter—email apologies fall short), offer a “we’re sorry” discount, or make things right another way. Use mistakes as a chance to deepen, rather than disrupt, the customer relationship.

4. Trust. 

Here is another place surveys can play an important role. Ask customers to rate how much they trust you on a sliding scale. Create different scales for different areas of your company (products, service, customer care). If you rank low in some areas, you know where to get to work.

5. Willingness to try new things. 

Happy, loyal customers buy more, and the more loyal they are, the more they buy over time. If you track your customers’ purchases, you can suggest upsells and cross-sells and alert them to new offerings based on what they have purchased in the past.

Customer loyalty is serious business. Knowing these five loyalty behaviors gives you a head start on where and how to focus your efforts to communicate with your customers and keep them happy, satisfied, and buying more.