I think we’ve taken the “interpersonal” metaphor a little too far when it comes to analyzing customer satisfaction.

We speak in terms of customer “experiences,” a hippie sort of word, at best.

For instance, that person over at Mahoney Ford isn’t buying a car; he’s having a deep personal experience. Let’s detail every moment of truth, every possible instance of intimacy, and determine whether as a dealership we were a hit or a miss with him.

That’s just a little too fuzzy for me.

Also, we throw around the word “relationship” as if we’re talking about potential marital partners. Frankly, I don’t want to have a relationship with the bakery, or with the baker, for that matter. I just want a good, fresh loaf of bread, and an occasional remedy for my sweet tooth.

And multiply that sentiment for the word, “loyalty.”

Commercial relationships are about utility, functionality, trading value for value. In a word, they’re about money.

What most vendors are talking about when they say loyalty is a sort of psychological feeling of dependency that they hope to arouse in clients who will then continue to trade with them out of a vague feeling that they “owe a duty” to the vendor to do so.

I have to admit I did this once with a lawyer who was helping me negotiate a video contract. He blew it, offering the worst advice I ever got, and the deal slipped away.

Rather than face the fact that he was a genial incompetent, who happened to be a big booster of my alma mater, and therefore had an “in” with me, I kept working with him. Finally, I studied law myself and passed the bar out of self-protection!

What right-thinking consumer really says: “Gee, I’ve always bought my life insurance from Ted and even if his rates are nearly double that of another source, I must keep doing business with him. I’m a loyal client and I owe it to him and to his family!”

Oh, come on.

If you want to know how someone regards you, your products, and your service or services, there is a simple test:

Try to sell him something else, right now!

If he buys, you can infer he’s probably happy with how you did for him last time, or over the course of time. If he balks, has to check your competitor’s pricing “just to keep you honest,” then he’s probably less than thrilled.

To take a page from Forrest Gump’s playbook, we might say: Loyalty is as loyalty does.

What we’re after is repeat sales.

Loyalty isn’t the handshake.

It is the cash-in-hand that says, “Please sell me again, and again!”