Too often, businesses look at their customers as they would rows in a spreadsheet. Businesses spend time figuring out how to get more money out of them, analyzing how often they come back and how much they spend on each trip, and figuring out how much a customer will spend on a particular item. But customers can and should be much more than just an income stream. Customers’ experiences can range from completely unhappy to glowingly positive. Both types of customer can greatly influence your company’s reputation. Generally speaking, customers fall into one of five categories:

• Evangelists These types of folks have had so many positive experiences with your company and/or product that whenever a subject even mildly related to your company, products, or services comes up in conversation, they just have to tell everyone about it. Many different companies enjoy this type of customer—for example, Apple Computer evangelists can be so passionate that they’ll say Apple is a religion. These customer evangelists are the types of passionate people that will transform your business, and the currency they deal in is positive experiences.

• Regular customers These customers enjoy your product or service. They may admit it’s not the best in the world, but they buy it because it has value, it is the cheapest, or they haven’t found anything better. They’ve had enough positive experiences that the negative ones seem paltry in comparison.

• Reluctant customers These customers have had negative experiences with your company—often many negative experiences—to the point at which they simply expect a negative experience or a poor product every time. Occasionally, they’ll be pleasantly surprised and will leave contented, but generally they simply accept that they have to buy from you and they move on. In many ways, these customers are living a balance of positive, negative, and blasé experiences.

• Occasional sufferers These customers don’t enjoy your product or service, but they buy from you when they have to, and only because they have to. Some people who eat at fast food restaurants fall under this banner—although they will never evangelize or even talk positively about what they’re buying, they’ll buy it when absolutely necessary.

• Saboteurs These customers have had so many negative experiences (or perhaps only a handful of incredibly negative experiences) that they will go to whatever ends necessary to do whatever harm they can to your business.

Each of these personalities is created over time through a pattern of individual experiences with your company. Successful companies strive to create positive experiences for customers through positive environments, well-trained staff, great value, and quality products; whatever your customers are looking for, that you are able to provide, is a potential positive experience. Do you provide a storefront? Investing in a positive shopping space is vital. Do you provide food or hospitality services? Smiling, courteous, and energetic staff are a must. Do you provide analysis or consulting services? Knowledgeable consultants, value-added services, excellent communication, and constant follow-up will create positive experiences for your customers.

Most customers don’t look for reasons to be unhappy; in fact, most are looking for positive experiences, and often it takes only one of those in a given industry to transform the way customers look at every single service provider in that industry. The influence wielded by businesses who create positive experiences is disproportionate to their size: Apple Computers isn’t the largest or most popular computer manufacturer (not by a long shot), yet it is one of the most-watched tech companies on the planet. BMW and Mercedes don’t sell the most cars in America, but the consumer desire to own one is palatable. Starbucks may make great coffee, but people aren’t necessarily buying just the coffee—they’re buying an overall positive experience.

But creating positive experiences isn’t really about being a luxury supplier like Apple, BMW, and Starbucks are in their industries. You can create positive experiences no matter what business you’re in by having friendly and knowledgeable staff members, offering exclusive discounts, and generally building your business by contributing to their experiences.

Positive experiences create emotional responses, and nothing is worse than a customer who feels no emotion toward your business: no emotion means no loyalty, so customers really have no reason to stay.