2009年，克里斯蒂娜•鲍威琳开始举办客户答谢午宴，当时她觉得这样做仅仅是为了照顾一位朋友萧条的生意而已。

    她没料到的是，这些通常在华盛顿特区周围像The Palm和Capital Grille这样的高档饭店举办的午餐会竟然给她带来了近900名客户，有力地推动了她自己的生意。

    鲍威琳意想不到的成功说明，答谢和感恩可以在生意场上产生多大的威力。

    “我们并没有开发新客户，而是决定回到老客户身边，向他们致谢，进一步发展关系，”她说。近20年来，她的莱斯顿豪华车租赁公司（Reston Limousine）很少、甚或从来没有采取过任何方式来感谢其近2万名客户。现在，“我认为这是我最重要的举措，”鲍威琳说。

    一些商家并没有选择仅仅只在一年中的某一天（比如感恩节、元旦或一年一度的感恩顾客促销活动）表达感谢之意，而是将其纳入每天和每周的计划和决策当中。它们正在看到这样做的好处：员工们觉得自己受到了赏识，通常会更加积极地工作；而客户们则更有希望成为“回头客”，同时带来新主顾。

    “感激可以激发起积极的互惠行为，”里士满大学（University of Richmond）营销学教授兰迪•拉希奥说。如果客户认为企业把顾客的最佳利益放在心上，他就更愿意跟这家企业发展长期的关系。

    拉希奥第一次对感恩行为的效应产生兴趣是在卡特里娜飓风袭击美国之后，当时路易斯安那州举办了一场感恩活动，感谢民众的捐款。根据他的研究，许多看到这场活动的人更有可能在未来捐款或从事志愿活动，甚至那些之前没有参与捐助活动的人也会这么做。

    企业可以采用多种方式表达其感激之情。比如，面向最好的客户举办私人销售活动；在账单上附上几块巧克力；或者仅仅是说上一句谢谢你。感激务必要真诚，如果不是面向所有人，效果会更好。

    拉希奥说，客户回馈的方式通常表现为：介绍一位朋友，在网上写上一段正面的评语，或者是愿意以后购买更多产品。 

    When Kristina Bouweiri started hosting customer appreciation lunches in 2009, she thought she was just helping a friend boost her lagging business.

    Little did she know that the lunches, which have been held in posh restaurants around Washington, D.C. like The Palm and Capital Grille, would introduce her to almost 900 of her clients, giving her own business a jolt.

    Bouweiri's unexpected success is testament to the power of appreciation and gratitude in business.

    "Instead of going after new business, we decided to go back to old clients and thank them, and develop relationships," she says. For almost 20 years, her company Reston Limousine had done little or nothing to thank its almost 20,000 clients. Now, says Bouweiri, "I consider it the most important initiative that I have."

    As opposed to showing appreciation one day a year -- at Thanksgiving or New Year's or in an annual customer appreciation sale -- some businesses are building it into their daily and weekly plans and policies. And they are seeing the benefits to this approach: Workers are often more engaged when they feel appreciated and customers are more likely to come back and give referrals.

    "Gratitude motivates positive reciprocal behavior," says Randy Raggio, a marketing professor at the University of Richmond. If a customer believes that a business has his best interests at heart, that customer is more inclined to develop a long-term relationship with the business.

    Raggio first grew interested in gratitude in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, when the state of Louisiana ran a thank-you-for donations campaign. Many people who saw the campaign were more likely to donate or volunteer in the future, according to his research, even those who had not previously participated in that particular campaign.

    A business might show their appreciation by having private sales for their best customers, by offering a few chocolates with the bill, or simply by saying thanks for your business. It needs to be genuine and it's better if it's not open to all.

    Customer appreciation, Raggio says, usually comes in the form referring a friend, writing a positive review online, or perhaps a willingness to pay more later on.

    领导力培训机构“学院”（The Academies）的老板苏珊•惠特科姆称，多年来，她一直把感谢行为充分应用于这家位于加州弗雷斯诺的公司的管理之中。今年，她打算给手下的4位员工每人写一份清单，列举“感谢你为我做的10件事”。她说，她将在感恩节前夕把这份清单给他们。在其中的一份清单上，她感谢一位员工“倾注全力的勇气”，感谢她学着开展电话销售、管理团队，还感谢她“改善仪容的决心”。

    惠特科姆说，虽然她无法量化这种感激行为对她的生意究竟起了多大的帮助作用，但她知道在经济衰退最严重的几个月中，这样做的确对公司起到了作用。

    感激之所以是一个有效的工具，主要原因在于“它是建立信任的前兆，” 阿拉巴马州伯明翰市桑佛德大学（Samford University）营销学教授贝特西•布格•霍洛威这样说道。而信任本身就是推动忠诚极其强有力的因素，无论这种忠诚属于何种类型的关系。同样，感激只有发自真心才有价值。

    “它并非什么创造财富的神奇公式，”《一次简单的感激行为》（A Simple Act of Gratitude）一书作者约翰•克莱里克说。他于2008年开始写感谢信，当时他的生活和律师事务所都发展得很不顺利。事务所一直在赔钱，已经没钱再继续租写字楼了。“我没法像往年那样给我的员工发放圣诞节奖金，我非常难堪，”他回忆说。

    于是，他开始给员工和那些按时付款的客户写感谢信。他还给他的子女、朋友，以及为事务所介绍客户的律师们递送了类似的信函。克莱里克说，有一位律师回信称，他以前并不知道克莱里克需要这样的客户。“如果你喜欢的话，我还可以给再你介绍10个，”这位律师在信中写道。

    他看到了感谢信和生意再次兴隆起来的联系。“如果你爱护支付酬金的客户，他们的付款速度甚至会变得更快。他们也会珍惜你，”他说。一位客户按时递送来的支票帮助他的事务所重新找了一个安身之地，并支付了新办公地的租金。其他人则给他带来了更多的生意。“当你觉得走途无路时，或许就是坐下来，写上10封感谢信的时候了，”克莱里克说。

    文具礼品店“蒲公英天地”（The Dandelion Patch）的海蒂•卡莱特过去一直在写感谢信，但她现在找到了新的办法来维持生意的兴隆。她和她的朋友，也就是前面提到的豪华车租赁公司老板，想出了一个主意，举办一场客户答谢午餐会（她们当时认为这样的活动只会搞这一次），并邀请租车公司客户的行政助理们一道参加。

    午餐会非常成功，因为这些助理们平常很少受邀参加这类特别聚会，只是经常看到她们的老板奔赴各类高档商务饭局。

    For years, Susan Whitcomb says she has made good use of gratitude at her Fresno, Calif.-based leadership coaching business, The Academies. This year, she decided she would write a list of "10 things I'm grateful about you" for each of her four staffers, which she says she'll give to them just before Thanksgiving. One of the notes acknowledges a colleague's "courage to stretch," learn to make sales calls, manage others, and her "commitment to make me look good."

    While she admits that she cannot quantify how that has helped her businesses, Whitcomb says she knows it has helped during the recession's slowest months.

    Gratitude is an effective tool largely because "it is a precursor to develop trust," says Betsy Bugg Holloway, a marketing professor at Samford University in Birmingham, Al. And trust itself is an extremely powerful driver for loyalty, no matter the type of relationship. Just the same, gratitude is only valuable when it comes across as genuine.

    "It's not meant to be any magical formula for wealth," says John Kralik, author of A Simple Act of Gratitude. He started writing notes in 2008, as his life and law firm were both suffering. His firm was losing money and had lost its office lease. "I was very embarrassed that I couldn't provide the Christmas bonuses that I had always provided to my employees," he recalls.

    So he wrote appreciation notes to his staff, and sent similar notes to clients who paid their bills on time. He wrote to his children, his friends, and to lawyers who sent a client his way. Kralik says one of the lawyers wrote back to him, saying that he had no idea Kralik would want a client like that. "If you like one, I have 10 more," the lawyer wrote.

    He sees the link between the thank-you notes and his business thriving again. "As you take care of the paying clients, they pay even faster. They value you," he says. One client's timely check allowed his firm to relocate and pay the new rent. Others brought him more business. "When you're feeling especially crummy, it's a good time to sit down and write about 10 thank-you notes," Kralik says.

    Heidi Kallett had been sending out thank-you notes, but she was looking for another way to keep her stationery and gifts stores, The Dandelion Patch, going. So she and her friend, the limousine company owner, came up with what they thought would be a one-time client appreciation lunch, and invited administrative assistants at the companies that used the limousine company.

    The lunches work especially well because assistants are hardly invited to special meals but often watch their bosses head off to a fancy business lunch.

    “我们没有销售任何东西，整个活动非常低调。我们只是站起来，自我介绍了两分钟，”卡莱特说。然后，她们开始派发入场奖品和“红包”。

    鲍威琳当时还邀请当地十几家商户参加了这次午餐会，他们也有意会见她的客户们；这些合作伙伴和其他商家现在都成了活动的赞助者，还在各自的商圈内充当起这家豪车租赁公司的“宣传大使”。

    答谢餐会产生了很好的效果：去年，该公司的收入增加27%。在鲍威琳看来，这主要应该归功于每年大约举办10次的客户答谢午餐活动。2009年9月份，她将租金提高了10%，并开始征收燃油附加费，但是“客户们连眼睛也没眨一下。因为我们已经建立了长期持久的业务关系，”她说。

    “当初我想出这个主意的时候是为了帮助好友海蒂，但没想到最后我自己反倒成了最大的受益者，”鲍威琳说。

    译者：任文科

    "We don't sell anything. It's very low key. We just stand up and introduce ourselves for two minutes," says Kallett. Then they give away door prizes and swag bags.

    Bouweiri came up with a dozen other local business owners who also would be interested in meeting her clients; these partners and others now sponsor the event - and serve as "ambassadors" for the limo company in their circles.

    The appreciation lunches have paid off: Last year, revenues at the company increased by 27%, mostly as a result, she says, of the client appreciation lunches, which are held about 10 times a year. Even when she raised rates 10% and added a fuel surcharge in September 2009, "customers were not batting an eyelash. We've created long-term lasting relationships," she says.

    "I came up with this idea because I was trying to help Heidi -- and I ended up helping myself," said Bouweiri.