3 Simple Ways to Keep Customers Happy:
posted a while back about the amazing customer service I received at a local furniture store. You may recall how impressed I was with their personal service and attention to the finer details, such as having a plate of warm cookies and a vacuous TV show available to bribe my children into temporary silence.
#1 – Follow Through
We’ve all heard this maxim and it’s true: the gold really is in the follow up. Or not.
Picture me all giddy and pampered at my new favorite store of all time. I choose a set of sofa, chair, and ottoman for my children to watch TV on at home (noticing a theme?). Because I am with my highly talented decorator friend, we settle on some special order pillows to go with the set. Had I known what I was getting into, I would have taken the whole thing along with the plain brown pillows right then and there off the showroom floor. But no, I was assured that all my pieces would arrive in a mere 4-5 weeks. Yay.
That was April.
At the end of May I started to get excited anticipating the arrival of my new furniture. I called and found out it should be in by mid-June. At the end of June I called to ask where it was and was told there were some delays due to the fabric not being available. Near the end of July I was getting seriously miffed, but just in time the store called to schedule my delivery.
#2 – Deliver More Than You Promise
When the truck showed up at my house I was thrilled. That is, until it took me 30 minutes to convince the guys that yes, the sofa would fit through the hall and can we please just try it even though I know you think it won’t but I measured and I’m pretty sure it’ll fit. Finally I had my furniture. But wait, what are those plain brown pillows? Didn’t I order Robin’s Egg blue with Chocolate piping?
My call to report the error set off a three week round of back and forth communication between me and three other people the outcome being that they just couldn’t get the pillows for me because that particular manufacturer doesn’t do special order pillows.
Really? Because nobody mentioned that when we were all high on the scent of chocolate chip cookies.
#3 – Solve the Problem
It might not have been so bad if the woman hadn’t mentioned over and over how I could keep the brown pillows – the ones I didn’t want.
After calmly explaining that I would like to have exactly what I ordered – after waiting almost five months for the privilege – I was once again told that it was not possible. Because I find it hard to believe Robin’s Egg blue with Chocolate piping is all that impossible to come by I asked if they could not simply order the fabric and send it to a local sewing workroom so that I might have my pillows?
We’re talking $50.
If it were your business, wouldn’t you eat $50 to make a customer happy?
I would. I have. It’s what you do sometimes.
In the end, they ‘called in a favor’ for me. Turns out the manufacturer does custom order pillows after all. However, they are not yet actually here, at my house. On the bright side, I’m keeping the brown pillows too – bonus!
Am I wrong for expecting great customer service? How far do you go to make sure a happy customer stays that way?
Creating stories that resonate
Every person in the market has a worldview when it comes to what you’re selling. It might be, “I don’t care about that,” or it might be, “all big companies are evil” or it might be, “I love new stuff.”
When your story aligns with my worldview, we have something to discuss. When it doesn’t, you’re likely to be invisible.
A worldview is a lot like the strings on a piano or the cables in a bridge. When it hits something that is of the same frequency, it resonates. The cause and the effect embrace each other and the story sticks, and spreads.
It’s essentially impossible to tell a story to an entire population and have it resonate with all of them. The global warming story, for example, has influenced some people a great deal and been dismissed out of hand by others.
While most marketers spend their time telling stories about themselves, politicians spend a lot of time telling (negative) stories about the competition. It’s illuminating, because it makes the resonance idea really clear. [The rest of this post is about politics. It’s okay with me if you skip it, feel free to do so if you expect to be offended.]
Here are two stories:
Barack Obama is hopelessly liberal. He will raise our taxes, and he’s not a real American. You can’t trust him.
and
John McCain is a fake. He will say and do anything to be elected, and he is just four more years of our last mistake.
Choose your story (or the competition’s story) wisely, because you have to live with it for a long time, and if it’s not authentic, if it doesn’t hold up, you’re left with nothing. In the case of an election, the effect of your competitor’s story on your base is critical. (And vice versa). John Kerry called George Bush dumb, but it didn’t matter, because Bush’s base didn’t care that Kerry thought he was dumb. The people who did care had already decided not to vote for Bush, so the story had no power. Will McCain’s base care that he’s a fake? Will Obama’s base care that he’s untested and different?
I think that Obama’s base isn’t as shaken by that story as McCain’s base is by the ‘fake’ one. The worldview that elected Ronald Reagan is one that admired his authenticity and his ability to stick to his principles. George Bush took advantage of that same worldview in the stories he told about being a strong leader. “Fake” undoes a lot of that.
The reliance on negative stories in politics makes me sick. I think we should be above that. The fact that negative stories have influenced every election of my lifetime, though, means that I’m wrong, we’re not above it. If politicians are going to tell negative stories, they might as well pick useful ones.
Start with the truth. Identify the worldview of the people you need to reach. Describe the truth through their worldview. That’s your story. When you overreach, you always fail. Not today, but sooner or later, the truth wins out. Negative or positive, the challenge isn’t just to tell the truth. It’s to tell truth that resonates.
STEPHEN M.R.COVEY TALKS ABOUT TRUST
Stephen M.R. Covey joined me to talk about trust for the August session of the Duct Tape Marketing Coaching Excellence Series.
Covey is co-founder and CEO of CoveyLink Worldwide and author of bestselling The SPEED of Trust
Trust is such a big issue in business and, in fact, a core component of my definition of marketing – getting someone who has a need to know, like and trust you. The need for trust is such an obvious notion but I think many people take a limited view of what it really means. Covey talks about the need to both earn and give trust as equal parts of the same concept.
During our chat he share a story about a street vendor who was frustrated by the fact that he could only serve a finite number of customers because he spent so much time taking money and making change. So, as a test, he started allow the customer to pay and make change on their own. He discovered that not only could he serve many more customers over lunch, people were rarely dishonest and, in fact, tips were higher. By extending trust he built his own.
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