Customers can sniff out phonies so learn to keep them happy.

Seven months ago a survey of 6,000 British shoppers ranked Hotel Chocolat as the fourth ‘most advocated’ brand available in this country – and the only British brand in the top 10.

We don’t need any reminding that loyalty from our customers, and the propensity to be advocated by them, is the most valuable currency in any business.

My priority as a chief executive is to focus on how to protect and further nurture this encouraging position.

When we opened our first stores eight years ago, our ‘100% Guarantee’ was painted on the wall behind the tills.

As we developed, this was less strongly messaged although still ever-present in how we acted. Now was the time to strengthen and emblazon this. It became ‘100% Happiness Guaranteed’.

Quite simply, every guest (customer) interaction should result in a happy outcome.

This is about the empowerment of our team to almost look forward to when a small thing goes wrong, so they can show what sort of business we are as they put it right, there and then.

It’s a setter-of-expectations, a call to action and an investment in loyalty.

I firmly believe that customers today can sniff out phonies from a long way away. Brands that are not demonstrating an obsessive interest in their subject are on a bad trajectory, and will find it difficult to instil feelings of passionate advocacy in their customers. It’s like any relationship, you get back what you put in.

One of the best things that we ever did was to follow our hearts and buy an old cocoa estate in Saint Lucia. A serendipitous act of kindness spurred one of ourChocolate Tasting Club members to send me an old book from the 1920s about cocoa growing.

As a result and only a few weeks later, I found myself standing in an overgrown cocoa grove with my normally cautious (chartered accountant) business partner, Peter Harris.

When he exclaimed “Angus, we’ve got to get this”, I knew brand destiny was driving events.

Becoming farmers on the other side of the planet was not in the business plan and would be seen as lunacy by many.

But much of our innovation has flowed organically from that point.

For example, our Roast & Conch cocoa cafes; Boucan, our fine-dining cocoa cuisine restaurant and hotel concept; and Cocoa Juvenate, our forthcoming spa and beauty product range.

An innovation of a different kind is a more evolved sustainable cocoa plan, ‘Engaged Ethics’.

All these ideas were incubated on our cocoa estate.

Much of the above was made possible only through the support of our lovely customers in signing up to our chocolate bonds issue, which raised £4m two years ago.

A truly ‘lump in the throat’ demonstration of loyalty and trust that continues to spur us on. But that’s another story…

  • Angus Thirlwell is chief executive of Hotel Chocolat