The episode guest stars Chris Diamantopoulos as Brian the boom mike operator, and Ben Silverman as Isaac, a coworker of Jim's.

The series—presented as if it were a real documentary—depicts the everyday lives of office employees in the Scranton, Pennsylvania, branch of the fictional Dunder Mifflin Paper Company.

In this episode, Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) is forced to miss his daughter's first recital after a major investor exits his company, leading to a fight with his wife Pam (Jenna Fischer).

Nellie Bertram (Catherine Tate) tries to put an end to Pete Miller (Jake Lacy) and Erin Hannon's (Ellie Kemper) flirting with each other.

The episode received largely positive reviews from television critics; many praised Krasinski and Fischer for the dramatic fight at the end.

When this is ineffective, Dwight joins Darryl's delivery run to make the job more "fun", including ordering a milkshake at a fast food drive-through and throwing it at the server, shouting "Fire in the hole!"

Jim's plan to drive home from Philadelphia to see his daughter Cece's ballet recital hits a snag when a major investor says he is backing out.

During the opening of the recital, she stops recording to take a phone call informing her that she has been chosen to paint an important public mural.

Jim calls her that evening to tell her the investor backed out, and his group will have to work long hours to make up the lost funds.

A previously unseen boom operator named Brian enters into the shot and comforts her, and tells the crew to stop filming.

"Customer Loyalty" was written by co-executive producers Jonathan Green and Gabe Miller, their second writing credit for the series after "Andy's Ancestry".

[5] Originally, the idea to have a sound man named Brian comfort Pam when she was crying was proposed by former series actress and writer Mindy Kaling.

During the cold open for the sixth season episode "Shareholder Meeting", a montage of Dwight harassing past receptionists was shown.

James Poniewozik of Time magazine concluded that it "showed the stakes behind its characters' paper-pushing lives in a way it hasn't since Michael Scott left Scranton."

He called the first half a "wacky ensemble show", but said that the last part featured elements that allowed the audience to "all but hear the old machinery [of earlier episodes] waking up and sliding into place".

[18] Mark Perigard of the Boston Herald commented on the fight between Jim and Pam, writing that it "felt just like the kind of argument that two real people would have.

"[19] Brett Harrison Davinger of the California Literary Review wrote that the episode was "fine" and was composed of "several small storylines, all of which worked".

He called the final fight between Pam and Jim "ugly and real" and one in which "the writers didn't flinch", in that it truly made him feel uncomfortable.

[20] Rick Porter of Zap2it felt that, while the episode was "up and down" (he wrote that Dwight and Darryl's subplot was "flat", but that Erin and Pete's yielded several humorous lines) the final confrontation between Jim and Pam was "a big dose of reality" and that it was not "a contrived fight".

[21] Wilcox wrote that Brian's appearance was a "weird turn", and that it was "kind of funny" that the first time a member of the camera crew intervened with the characters was when Pam needed comforting and not "one of Dwight or Michael's dozens of near-death experiences.