Customer Service and Customer Experience

Inviting Your Customers to Foursquare

April 27, 2012 3 Comments

In an earlier post I wrote about some Creative Ways to Use Foursquare to market your business.

One of those ideas was to create “Easter Eggs”:

Hide “Easter Eggs” in your products or billing statements. Print out a mini-flyer describing your Foursquare specials and hide them inside books, packaging, or include them with correspondence to your customers. Remind them that when they visit your store they are eligible for special rewards when they Check In on Foursquare.

You can include these in mailings, shopping bags, table tents or anywhere you have an opportunity to send or give your customer a piece of paper.

I have created a couple of templates for you to work with for incorporating these promotional materials into your marketing program.

A check-stuffer: download the .doc file
foursquare check stuffer 280x122 Inviting Your Customers to Foursquare

I used Open Office Draw to make a table tent: download the file here

Get creative! What are some other ways that you can think of to create a IRL invitation to join a virtual community?

Buttons? Imagine making a badge that the Mayor of your place of business can wear while they are visiting.

Stickers? Share your thoughts in the Comments.

Add Stephen on G+

About the author: Stephen Smith teaches Productivity and Social Media Literacy skills at In Context MultiMedia. He will be publishing a compilation of best practices based on his popular Weekly Letter called “Work.Smarter!” (special offer at the link!) in May.

You can follow him on Twitter at @hdbbstephen.

My Ford Edge Customer Loyalty Story, Part 1

February 20, 2012 8 Comments

Guest author Brad Shorr has agency, in-house, and entrepreneurial marketing experience. He writes frequently about social media, SEO, content strategy, and other business issues of interest to small and midsized companies. He lives in the Chicago area and has been blogging since 2005.

A Little TLC Goes a Long Way

Bradsford

Introduction

This story contains 12 lessons on customer loyalty: how hard it is to acquire, how easy it is to lose, and how simple it can be to regain — if you know what to do.

Chapter 1: Living on the Edge

For the last 15 years, I was a loyal Toyota customer, driving pretty much nothing other than white Toyota 4-door sedans. I’m a creature of habit. But in August 2011, I impulsively decided to do the opposite, ala George Costanza. So instead of buying a white Toyota sedan, I leased a burgundy Ford Edge crossover vehicle.

Going in, my prevailing emotions were skepticism and apprehension. And sure enough, no sooner than driving off the lot I began having trouble with Ford’s MyTouch system, the computer “brain” of the vehicle. Unbeknownst to me, MyTouch (a Microsoft/Ford collaboration) was a quality nightmare that had been vexing consumers to no end.

Although my Edge — christened Bradsford — was an otherwise wonderful car, MyTouch confirmed all of my doubts about abandoning Toyota quality. My issues with the computer system ranged from annoyances to genuine safety concerns. Result: a bad case of buyer’s remorse.

Customer Loyalty Lesson #1: Doing 9 out of 10 things right doesn’t cut it.

Chapter 2: Spoiling for a Fight

You Sure Look Pretty!

After settling in with my negative attitude, I became an active brand disloyalist. I found a way to view every car feature and every interaction with Ford in a negative light. I took every opportunity to share my complaints, talking to friends, posting bad reviews on automotive websites, making snarky comments on social media — all things which normally are quite out of character.

I complained to Ford corporate, becoming ever more vexed as I worked my way through its tangled phone and email bureaucracies. And even when I made contact with an actual person who provided useful assistance, I interpreted it in a negative light. No matter what the dealer did, no matter what Bradsford did — it would never be good enough. The dealer upgraded me to the second-generation system for free; I complained that I had to rent a car. My car was transporting me reliably and comfortably all over the Midwest; I went out of my way to find and complain about every slight design and performance flaw I could find. Am I proud of this? No, but my fundamental conviction was simply this: I was paying top dollar for an expensive vehicle that was only working at 80% efficiency. This was wrong and I was unhappy.

Customer Loyalty Lesson 2: Emotions determine loyalty, not facts.

Chapter 3: Abandonment and Despair

By January, anger had given way to melancholy. My plaintive appeals to Ford on Google+ went unnoticed. Corporate was still talking to me, but it felt like they were doing me a favor just picking up the phone. The dealership’s attitude seemed to be, “there’s nothing we can do.” I resigned myself to the fact I was stuck with a car I didn’t like. The much-touted MyTouch software update, which I was told would arrive in January, was now promised by the end of the first quarter, but I wasn’t holding my breath.

All I could do was count the days until my lease ended. And all I knew was my next vehicle would be anything other than a Ford.

Customer Loyalty Lesson #3: Building customer loyalty requires you to take an active role.
__________

To Be Continued …

OVER TO YOU

How have you responded to situations where a product you purchased let you down, or the service behind the product let you down?

If you were in Ford’s position in this situation, what would you do? (Stay tuned to see what they actually did.)

__________

Note: Brad Shorr works for Straight North, a Chicago Internet marketing company. They have many small B2C and B2B clients, including Newport Beach cosmetic dentists and a car lift repair company.

Get Some Purple Goldfish to Amp Up Your Customer Experience from @9inchmarketing

January 11, 2012 4 Comments

Today is the official launch day for my friend Stan Phelps’ new book What’s Your Purple Goldfish? 2 weeks ago I did a fantastic video interview with Stan to share with you today. Murphy’s Law being what it is, only Stan’s half of the audio was recorded. So rather than give you Stan answering questions you can’t hear, I read my own lips, typed them up, and added Stan’s responses, to provide you with this transcription of our conversation.

Before I share the interview, I wanted to share something: I didn’t believe Stan would ever find 1001 Purple Goldfish for his book. That’s not like me to not believe someone, but I really thought it was too ambitious of a goal. I implored Stan to stop at 200 or even 500, but thankfully for you, he didn’t listen to me. And I couldn’t be more proud of what he accomplished in finding 1,001 purple goldfish, of which he distilled down the lessons into this fantastic book. And if you buy the book, there’s an extra secret code in there that will allow you to read all 1,001 stories.

This interview (and Stan’s book) offers tips and insights to help small businesses create a consistently outstanding customer experience for their customers, one worth talking about to everyone, online and offline.

Now on with the interview.

Interview with Stan Phelps, author of What’s Your Purple Goldfish

Phil: What is a purple goldfish?

Stan: A purple goldfish is giving a little something extra to your customer at the time of purchase. It improves your customer’s experience with you. It differentiates you from your competition. And most importantly, it gives your customers something to talk about, online and offline.

Phil: What is lagniappe (pronounced lan-yap)?

Stan: The concept has acdtually been around since 1840s. It’s creole (French and Spanish). La Nappa is Spanish for the gift. Twain wrote about it in Life on the Mississippi. He said lagniappe was a word worth traveling to New Orleans to get.

Phil: What were some of your favorite Purple Goldfish?

Stan: AJ Bombers and Pizza Shuttle are 2 of my favorites from Milwaukee that you submitted. (NOTE: Links to these stories can be found at the end of this interview). But rather than use those, I’d like to share 2 or 3 others.

First, I love Double Tree Hotels. They give you a wonderfully large and warm chocolate chip cookie as soon as you check in.

Another of my favorites is the restaurant chain 5 Guys Burgers and Fries, which is not everywhere yet, but it will be soon. When you walk in, there’s a huge vat of ballpark peanuts to nosh on. Also, when you buy fries at 5 Guys, you not only get the fries in the cup, you get some “bonus fries” which is another handful or two in your bag.

Southwest Airlines is a final example with their “Bags Fly Free” program. And Southwest really does a lot with many little added values.

Phil: It seems to me that creating Purple Goldfish starts with the culture. Would you agree?

Stan: I wholeheartedly agree. A Purple Goldfish is what I call a beacon. It attracts people to it, it guides the way when things are tough, and it shines a light on the entire company.

A Purple Goldfish is really an unexpected extra without any expectation of return. It’s just that little extra. Great companies get this, and companies that are struggling don’t.

Another thing to remember: Happy employees create happy customers. Do a little extra for your employees and help them do a little extra for your customers. The more you can empower your employees to do the little extra, the more you can make all the difference to your customers.

Phil: What similarities did you see between all the companies you caught in your Purple Goldfish net?

Stan: In collecting 1001 purple goldfish, it became clear there were 2 major categories:

1) Value Examples – the tangible type of goldfish where you give extra value to your customers, like extra fries.

2) Maintenance Examples – All about the little things you can do to make it easy for the customer to deal with you. One of the categories is from the convenience perspective.

What do you do when your customers are waiting? Waiting is inevitable, so find a way to do something extra. Another one is how do you recover from a mistake?

My favorite example of service recovery is an elder care company from Canada called Nurse Next Door. When someone at Nurse Next Door screws up, they apologize and send a fresh baked apple pie (think of this as humble pie) as a sign of “Hey, we screwed up. Sorry about that.” They’ve been able to track this down to customers they’ve retained, and customers that have come about as a result of these accidental screw ups – and recoveries.

Phil: Why do you think more companies deliver Purple Goldfish to their customers?

Stan: Mainly because of this fact: 90% of customers don’t complain out loud – they complain with their wallet and go somewhere else with their business, so there’s no opportunity to do service recovery. There can be no other explanation.

Phil:What’s one easy way to provide your customers a purple goldfish?

Stan: Unfortunately, there is no simple thing. Find what your company does that’s signature and find a way to add a little something extra to that. Think about what one thing you can do to stand out, and be sticky – to make folks love you and want to tell your story to a few friends – or a few thousand friends.

Something else: I think the biggest myth in marketing is MEETING EXPECTATIONS. Just like being on time. It’s a myth – either you’re on time, or you’re late. It’s just like that for expectations. Either you exceed expectations, or you fall short. There’s no middle ground.

Meeting expectations is like playing prevent defense in football. It only prevents you from doing one thing – winning.

Phil: How can we find more about you and the Purple Goldfish book?

Stan: The book site is easy to spell and remember: http://purplegoldfish.com. If you want more examples and marketing insights, here’s one that’s harder to spell, but is my main site, http://marketinglagniappe.com.

Some final thoughts from Stan: The best businesses don’t just do one signature thing – they have a whole school of Purple Goldfish to exceed their customers expectations, each and every time they connect.

What are you waiting for? Go buy Stan’s Book What’s Your Purple Goldfish? NOW!

A Purple Goldfish from Stan and Amazon.com

From 1/11/12 until 1/15/12 you can get the Kindle version of What’s Your Purple Goldfish? book FREE – if you’re an Amazon prime member.

Additional Purple Goldfish Resources:

Follow Stan Phelps on Twitter

Read about the 2 Purple Goldfish I submitted to the project:

1st post about AJ Bombers
2nd post about AJ Bombers
Read about Pizza Shuttle’s purple goldfish

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