The BIG Idea File: It’s the Little Things – 5 Small Customer Service Tactics that Make a Big Impact
Sometimes it’s the little things we do for our customers that mean the most to them. The important milestone remembered, the thoughtful extra touch, the small acknowledgement that their business means something to us.
Today’s BIG idea is all about how the little things we do can make a big impact. You never know when that extra smile, or that extra mile will turn someone’s day around.
It’s not always the big things we do that get our customers talking about our business. Sometimes the big impact is from the smallest of gestures and details. Try these 5 small customers service tactics as a starter…
5 Small Customer Service Tactics that Make a Big Impact
#1: A Helpful News Article – Sending your customers a helpful news article related to their business makes a big impact for two key reasons: #1 it’s always nice to get something that helps your business and #2 it shows that you understand their business and what matters to them.
#2: A Handwritten Note – Taking the time to write a short, personal note. Let’s face it – in today’s electronic everything world, anything handwritten makes a huge impact because it simply isn’t done anymore and it shows your hands-on approach to doing business with your customers.
#3: Pint-Sized Paperback – Sending anything lumpy and bumpy gets noticed because these days most mail is a) flat and b) bills. Find a pint-sized paperback of inspirational quotes or mini versions of your favorite classics and package them up for your customers!
#4: Social Media Shout-Out – Turning Twitter talk into a testimonial for the customers you love working with is always appreciated, especially if your fans and followers fit their target audience. Retweet them, give them a heartfelt shout-out or share their latest post via social media.
#5: Starbucks Coffee Card – Sending a Starbucks coffee card with an invitation to catch up over a virtual latte is a nice way to say “Thank you”. It’s also the perfect way to reconnect with customers and clients you may have lost touch with. Cheers to coffee chats!
The BIG Idea File: Viral Humor – Why Funny Goes the Distance Online
Ever find something so funny you just HAD to share?
In the good old days, you’d call your spouse in from the other room, giggling and pointing, “You have GOT to see this!” Or you’d annoy all your friends and family by forwarding the hilarious email of the day (thank goodness that trend is over).
Today with social media, the same thing happens, only instead of spouses (or whoever happens to be in the room) or unwitting email recipients, people share with their Facebook friends, Twitter followers, LinkedIn connections, blog readers, Flickr viewers and so on.
What do they share? What goes viral and spreads across the socialsphere like wildfire? Funny…hands down (yes, touching, useful, interesting, newsy information is also being shared, but not to the same extent as humor).
Why Videos of Talking Dogs are Interesting
Watching this video isn’t going to make you smarter, expand your worldview or even give you insight into dogs. So why has it been viewed over 61,952,376 times? Because it’s funny. Plain and simple.
Social media is the reason for its success. I first saw it in my Facebook news feed, complete with a comment after comment of something to the effect of “LOL”. So I shared it. Then a few months later, it popped up again and once again, I shared it.
Now imagine the ripple effect of friends and followers who shared it with their circles and so on and so on. It’s easy to see how a one-minute video with absolutely no informational value garnered so much attention.
The Reason Why Funny Goes the Distance Online
#1: Universal – Not everyone can agree on the news, politics, religion or even whether or not you should trick your kids into eating vegetables by hiding them in food, but everyone enjoys a good laugh! Humor is the universal connector.
#2: Shareable – In an age where even the most benign topics can be politically charged and the cause of much debate, humor is something you don’t need to worry about sharing (unless that humor falls into the politically incorrect category).
#3: User-Friendly – Let’s face it – funny is easy to digest. It’s not like you are asking your overloaded brain to take an afternoon break and read Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.
#4: Necessary – We all need a little bit of lightness in our lives. That’s perhaps reason people tend to share the funny over the shocking or depressing. No one needs another piece of bad news.
The BIG Idea File: Starbucks! Bring on the Behavior Bribery – How to Change Customer Behavior
Sometimes you have to wonder how much marketing is really just parenting for consumers, especially when companies use bribery to change or modify customer behavior.
And why not? It works (for both children and consumers alike).
It’s doubtful that Starbucks had parenting (or bribery) in mind when they launched their new receipt campaign, but if you think about it, that’s exactly what they are doing (only under with the fancy title: marketing).
Starbucks Receipt Campaign: Bribery Starbucks Style
Like many Starbucks customers, I try to limit myself to ONE trip a day. To dear old Mommy Starbucks, that’s bad behavior. She would like us to visit her more often, and preferably after 2 o’clock when Starbucks traffic hits an afternoon lull.
Like all good behavior modification programs, Mommy Starbucks knows that it’s important to reward good behavior. That’s probably why Starbucks introduced their receipt campaign.
It goes like this: visit any participating Starbucks BEFORE 2pm and you get a receipt that is only usable on the SAME DAY to purchase any cold drink for $2 AFTER 2pm. The aim is to get customers to make a return visit that same day and try one of their summer drinks.
It’s a win-win: Starbucks gets more afternoon customers and customers get an opportunity to try one of their summer drinks for only $2. The best part of the campaign is it doesn’t require additional signage or printing as the ‘coupon’ is the receipt.
Bribery 101: How to Change Customer Behavior
#1: Identify the Behavior Gaps – What aren’t your customers doing? Referring new customers? Making repeat purchases? Trying your new product line? Determining WHAT you want your customers to do is the first step to getting them to do it.
The more specific the better. Take the Starbucks example, for instance. Starbucks required customers to make a second purchase on the SAME day AFTER 2 pm!
#2: Design a Reward System – Create a reward system that incentivizes the EXACT behavior you want from your customers. The key with designing rewards systems is to not accidentally reward undesirable behaviors.
For example, offering big discounts for new customers often rewards the wrong behavior, namely switching providers. The same customers who switched for the perk will just as quickly switch back for a new incentive.
#3: Consistently Offer Rewards – When rolling out a new incentive designed to change behavior, it’s important to consistently offer it even though initially very few customers may take you up on it. Give them enough time to get used to the idea before calling it quits on the program.
Over the long term, it’s important to consistently deliver the rewards as loyal customers who miss out on a special perk may end up feeling neglected and may choose to go elsewhere in the future.
#4: Track Results – Build a tracking mechanism into your reward program. In the Starbucks example, the mechanism is the coupon redemption compared to the sales before 2pm.
Be sure to measure your results against the costs. So even though the Starbucks receipt campaign didn’t require additional marketing collateral, it did require internal communications and staff training to implement.
#5: Adjust Reward System – Did the bribe get the intended results? Were there any unintended consequences? Did the results justify the costs? Were there any weak points in the system?
For example, an unintended consequence of a poorly designed reward system that only incentivizes new customers is loyal customers who feel neglected because they are ineligible for any special privileges.
The BIG Idea File: A Winning Formula – How Kids Bowl Free Created a Win-Win Success
How do you create a winning formula for a win-win success?
You take two parties, moms with bored kids who are out of school for the summer and bowling allies that are virtually empty while people are out enjoying the summer sunshine. Put them together. What do you get? Kids Bowl Free!
It’s an innovative program that gives kids 2 free games of bowling every day all summer long at participating bowling allies in their local community, created and facilitated by KidsBowlFree.com.
For moms wondering what to do with their kids all summer long, it’s an easy sell because unlike every other summer activity, this one is free. For bowling allies facing a seasonal lull, it’s a way to give back to their local communities and garner interest in the sport for the coming winter season.
Kids Bowl Free is a win-win to the tune of 900 participating bowling centers and over 1.5 million kids who bowled for free in 2010 (and it keeps growing as more moms and bowling centers join the program).
Behind the Winning Formula – How to Create Win-Win Synergies
#1: Find a Problem – Or rather two different parties with problems that the other can solve. A kind of a “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure” type scenario where one party is wasting a resource that could be utilized by another group.
#2: Create a Unique Solution – Matchmaking between people who have too much of X and the people who need a lot more of X. Bowling centers and parents in the case of Kids Bowl Free. The genius of the Kids Bowl Free strategy is they facilitate the transaction without getting into that business.
#3: Partner on Promotion – Who better to help advertise your innovative idea than the parties who will benefit from it? Kids Bowl Free distributed over a million postcards via the local bowling centers.
#4: Become the Portal – Kids Bowl Free manages the program registration and distribution of the bowling coupons making it very easy for bowling centers to participate plus they take the hassle out of parents trying to find a local program in their community by giving them a one-stop hub to find a participating bowling center.
#5: Offer an Upsell – Wondering how Kids Bowl Free makes money offering free bowling to kids at bowling centers they don’t even own? Easy. Parents don’t bowl free. Kids Bowl Free offers parents the option of buying a Family Pass and joining their kids in 2 games per day.
Oh…and if you want your kids to bowl for free, check out KidsBowlFree.com!
The BIG Idea File: Stellar Social Engagement – 5 Social Media Campaigns (and What You Can Learn from the Big Brands)
Ever feel like it’s impossible to achieve the big results of the big brands without the big budget? Well it’s true that big brand advertising is in a league of its own when it comes to advertising budgets, but what is possible is to take the little gems of wisdom and apply them on a smaller scale.
5 Social Media Campaigns (and What You Can Learn from the Big Brands)
#1: Tassimo: The Art of a Simple Assignment – Tassimo launched a social media campaign to give away their Tassimo home systems to key influencers. Good idea. How they did it was an even better idea: person-by-person.
Unlike many social media campaigns that ask people to tell everyone they know, Tassimo won in the social space by keeping the assignment simple: pick two of your social media savvy peers to be the recipients of their own Tassimo! Easy to understand, easy to do (and you know we’re fond of easy).
Lesson: Don’t expect to turn your fans into your promotion base. Instead give them easy social sharing assignments. Yes, the Tassimo campaign took a lot longer to reach critical mass, but that meant it stayed in the social stream for a lot longer, garnering attention of influencers who were wondering, “How the heck do I get one?”.
#2: EA Active: A Lesson in Integration – The campaign started with a group of bloggers who were using EA Active to shed pounds, a real-time testimonial to the effectiveness of their fitness system (social proof is always a good thing).
What set the EA Active campaign apart was that it integrated traditional advertising into the social media campaign, instead of the reverse. EA Active cast the EA Active bloggers in their television commercials, which also aired on YouTube (continuing the social loop).
Lesson: Social media isn’t a replacement for traditional advertising. Instead think of social media as a tool to augment and amplify traditional advertising. Social integration on a smaller scale: consider engaging bloggers to review your product rather than just advertising online.
#3: White Cloud: The How and the Why of Involving Influencers – Want to influence the people who make the buying decisions? Hire them to engage in an authentic conversation with their peers about your brand.
That’s why White Cloud hired blog ambassadors to write about their products. White Cloud also featured the same bloggers in their print advertising, furthering the engagement loop. The key to their success was finding bloggers who not only fit their brand, but had a position of authority with their target audience.
Lesson: Often big brands engage influencers because they aren’t part of that community – an advantage small business have over big brands is that they ARE part of the community. Engage with the community of influencers who not only have a passion for your brand, but a position of authority within the social sphere.
#4: The Roger Smith Hotel: How to Reward Behavior – Lots of local businesses wonder how to turn their customers into social media fans. How about trying bribery?
That’s exactly what The Roger Smith Hotel did for its customers. Check in with FourSquare and get free bacon. It’s a win-win for everyone: the Roger Smith gets a social media endorsement from its fans and it’s social savvy customers get free bacon (and who doesn’t love bacon?).
Lesson: Your social media promotion doesn’t have to be a multi-million dollar campaign or even something overly complicated like creating a viral video. It can be something as simple as a bonus for becoming a Facebook fan, following on Twitter or checking in on FourSquare.
#5: Dove Singing in the Rain: Show How You ‘Walk the Talk’ – Sometimes you wonder if what is behind a clever marketing campaign is a lot fluff made up by the marketing agency.
Dove took bloggers behind the scenes of their real beauty campaign by hiring 14 of them to star in an online music video. The result? Not only did the bloggers share photos, and video clips from the making-of, but many wrote about their experience with the brand.
Lesson: Let your social media fans ‘get to know you’ (the you that is behind the brand). Dove accomplished it by bringing in the bloggers to get to know the brand up-close and gave them a chance to see for themselves that they walk the talk. On a smaller scale, it can be done by simply sharing a little bit of your personality.
The BIG Idea File: The Simplicity Principle – Why We Love the I Wear Your Shirt Business Model
The most dreaded words in marketing are “I don’t get it.” It means that despite all your creative efforts, your target audience can’t even understand WHAT you are selling much less WHY they would want to buy it.
That’s what we love about I Wear Your Shirt – it’s just so simple to understand! But don’t be fooled by the apparent simplicity of their business model. There is a lot behind 365 days of wearing shirts.
The I Wear Your Shirt.com Business Model
The premise of I Wear Your Shirt is built right into the name – they wear YOUR shirt for one day. Sort of a human torso for hire business that offers brands the opportunity to fill one of the 365 ad spots available over the course of an entire year.
Intrigued? We were too!
What we love about the I Wear Your Shirt business model:
#1: Simplicity – It’s dead easy to understand. They wear your shirt for one whole day, promoting their daily shirt via Twitter, Facebook, Ustream, YouTube and the I Wear Your Shirt web site.
#2: Reward Early Commitment – How’s this for an incentive to commit early? Their pricing model is $5 for January 1st plus $5 for each day after. So August 31st is $1215 because it’s 242 days after January 1st.
#3: Self-Serve Web Site – Want to buy a day? That’s easy too! All the available dates and the pricing for that day are available on their calendar. One click adds that day to your shopping cart and you’re done! No sales team needed to book your date.
#4: Visibility Built into Model – The purpose of the business model is to increase the visibility of the shirt of the day. That means they are actively promoting what they do too!
#5: Fun Factor – What sets them apart is the fun factor. These shirt-wearing guys (and now two gals) are having fun with it. They are out there talking to people, promoting via social and just plain having fun – a fantastic strategy for attracting both clients and employees.
#6: Authenticity – I Wear Your Shirt brings back the authenticity of people connecting with people. They aren’t a bunch of corporate hacks who are expected to tow the company line. They are a group of individuals sharing their take on your brand.
Now the I Wear Your Shirt model isn’t for everyone, but there are a lot of little gems you can take and apply to your business. How can you simplify your messaging so it’s dead easy to understand? What about holding a sliding scale sale that rewards customers for buying early? How can you add a little more self-service onto your web site?
The BIG Idea File: 5-Star Customer Service – 5-Star Sales and Service Tactics to Wow Your Customers
Admit it. What you love about staying in a 5-Star hotel or eating at an elegant 5-Star restaurant is the customer service. No one can argue that they REALLY know how to treat their customers.
But what can we, as entrepreneurs who are not in the hotel or restaurant business, learn from their 5-Star service approach? A lot when you look behind the service programs and examine the driving principles for those little gems of wisdom.
5-Star Sales and Service Tactics to Wow Your Customers
#1: Think of Absolutely EVERYTHING – Tell me if this has ever happen to you. You are sitting down in a crowded restaurant and you can’t find a spot for your purse so you end up sticking it under your feet hoping no one accidentally steps on it or on your chair with you, which may pose a logistical problem depending on the size.
It seems like such a small detail, but one of my favorite restaurants came up with a solution: purse tables. It’s a small table that sits in between the chairs, out of the way of waiters and diners. It’s fixes a logistical problem for waiters by removing a tripping hazard and it pleases customers who really don’t want their purses crammed in an awkward location.
Ask yourself: are you missing anything big, small or otherwise that you could be doing to care for your customers? It doesn’t have to be a huge innovation – just a simple helpful tool.
#2: Make it Personal – You would think with complex data management systems that this helpful customer service scenario would happen more often, but surprisingly, it doesn’t.
You call down to place your morning room service order and low and behold, they have all the fussy details about cold milk with a straw, eggs poached medium and toast with no butter right there. All the room service attendant needs to do is confirm the details.
Often businesses collect customer data to better understand and target their customer base, but think about how that data can be used to make it more convenient for your customer to work with you.
#3: Walk in their Shoes – If you have ever had to send a meal back because it wasn’t cooked properly, you know how much it sucks to watch everyone else at your table eat while you wait.
Imagine how happy that same customer was to receive a bowl of soup to eat while waiting for the replacement order because it instantly handles the awkwardness of one person waiting while others eat.
What can you learn about how to better serve your customers by walking in their shoes? What inconveniences can be removed with a simple fix that would otherwise be missed when looking at the big picture?
#4: Add Custom Touches – One of the best service tactics you see in the hotel industry is the practice of finding out as many details as possible at the time of booking. It’s not the information gathering that counts – it’s what you do with it.
The conference hotel located in the heart of the downtown business district would not normally see a lot of pint-sized travelers, but when the booking request included a crib, it let the frontline staff know that a tiny traveler would be staying and the room came complete with a baby bathroom kit and milk and cookies.
Think about how you can customize the experience for the different segments within your target market. What can you do to make it easy and more comfortable for them to do business with you?
#5: Deliver the Unexpected – Too often 5-Star hotels and restaurants blend together in a blur of posh details and over-the-top touches. Important yes. Memorable not really.
That’s why the only spa lounge I vividly remember is the one that had a jelly bean dispenser sitting next to the usual spa fare of herbal tea, cucumber water and unsalted almonds.
What is something unexpected you can add to the regular customer service mix? It doesn’t have to be extraordinary to be memorable.
The BIG Idea File: The Membership Model – How to Get Your Customers to Commit (Case Study)
Why is it customers seem to fear and loathe commitment? Perhaps this commitment phobia can be attributed to underhanded sales tactics used to get the unwitting consumer on an endless cycle of autorenewals, or the huge incentives offered to them to continually bounce between competitors.
Can you really blame customers for being a bit skittish about signing on for the long haul? Anyone who has tried to cancel an autorenewal payment knows it’s a serious pain. And why not jump ship when the competition is practically paying you to switch?
Massage Memberships: A Case Study in Rewarding Commitment
Massage Heights, a massage franchise, uses a membership model to encourage its customers to do exactly that: commit. It’s a simple variation on a proven membership model that gives members preferential treatment for committing to a monthly massage. (And who doesn’t’ want to commit to that?)
Every new customer is given the opportunity to ‘try’ them out at their preferred member rate after which they are given the choice to join or continue as a non-member. Members pay a monthly fee, which is essentially pre-paying for one massage. Non-members can enjoy their massage services as well, only at more than double the price.
It’s a win-win.
Members get a deal for joining for what they would pay for a massage and Massage Heights gets committed customers, drastically cutting down the need to continually acquire new customers. The one-time ‘try us’ rate gives new prospects an incentive to try them without penalizing truly loyal customers by offering new customers the best deal.
3 Keys to Building a Successful Membership Model
#1: Reward Commitment – All too often companies reward the wrong behavior, incentivizing new customers to ‘switch’, and neglecting their loyal customer base. Not only does it attract the wrong type of customers (disloyal switchers), it sends a negative message to your loyal customers.
Instead reward the behavior you want more of: committing! Offer your best incentives to your regular customers. That doesn’t mean you can’t entice new ones to try you out, but just means they don’t get the keys to the VIP room.
#2: Offer Options – “Package A, B or C – which one suits you best?” One-size fits all packages tend to fit no one and studies show that customers like options. Offer monthly packages that suit a range needs and budgets.
Consider offering the package equivalent of small, medium and the whole enchilada with price tags to match. That way you are rewarding the customers to opt to buy more up front, instead of buying each item individually over time.
#3: Be Customer-Centric – Don’t think of it as a simple way to boost your cash flow and get a guaranteed customer base. Think of it from your customer’s perspective – ask yourself what problem you are solving for your customers.
Your membership program should simplify the buying relationship. Perhaps by giving them a guaranteed spot in line or special privileges. Not sure what to offer? Ask your customers what they value the most.
The BIG Idea File: How to Get People to Say “I Fricking LOVE This! You HAVE to Try It” About Your Product!
Did you know that word-of-mouth recommendations hold more sway over your potential customers than any other form of advertising?
It makes sense if you think about it. Who are you going to trust when making a buying decision? A nameless, faceless advertiser or your best friend, your trustworthy neighbor or even the blogger who you read each and every week and feel a kinship with her words and her style?
The good news is as customers we love to talk about the brands that we LOVE.
We love to tell our girlfriends about where we got that “Oh-so-fabulous” pair of shoes ON SALE. We love to offer up product recommendations and detailed testimonials about how they helped us. We love letting people in on our best, most savvy shopping secrets.
If you get it right, we will talk and talk and talk and send more customers your way!
So how do you get that power of the personal recommendation working for YOU?
#1: Get the Basics Right – Deliver a quality product, and hire competent, friendly customer service staff. So often you see an amazing product marred by snippy frontline staff or a product that fails to live up to its marketing. If you don’t get this part right, don’t bother with the rest.
#2: Include a Surprise! – Maybe it’s an owner’s manual that includes a bit of humor or a free bonus that isn’t advertised, but arrives unexpectedly. The WHAT doesn’t really matter, but it has to be surprising, worthwhile and something your customers will talk about.
#3: Above and Beyond – Go above and beyond (or rather train and empower your frontline staff to get creative with how they deliver their service). Competent and friendly is the minimum standard. If you want your customers to talk, you need to do something special.
#4: Consistently Perform – Whatever you do to surprise and delight your customers, do it consistently. Don’t offer free cookies to customers on their birthday one year, and forget the next because they won’t (customers are good like that).
#5: No Strings Follow-up – Don’t you just hate it when every time a brand contacts you, it’s because they want something (that something being for you to buy more stuff)? Practice no-strings attached follow-up long after the sale – just cause.
If you aren’t sure what impresses your customers most about your brand or product, just ask. The answer will likely surprise you. Chances are good it’s something small you never considered to be all that important. Trust me, it is.
The BIG Idea File: Shoe Shopping, In-Store Demos and Sample Packs – Try-Before-You-Buy Marketing Tactics
Every girl knows that you can’t fall in love with that posh pair until you step your foot inside and give them a whirl around the store. It’s the same reason that in-store demos and sample packs are such effective marketing tools: people love to try before they buy!
How many times have you come home with a jar of what looks like a rudimentary paste that you sampled in the store and absolutely had to have on-hand for your next party? Or when you get a sample in the mail and try it only to discover your new favorite snack has been under your nose all this time.
So what do shoe shopping, in-store demos and sample packs all have in common? All three allow customers to try before they commit to buying. The reason is it such an effective marketing tactic is trying it gives prospects the confidence to buy – something the label alone could never do.
Would you really look at a jar of miscellaneous goo and think, “Yum – let’s plan on having that for dinner!”? Perhaps curious gourmets will stick it in the shopping cart for fun, but chances are you will stick with what you know. The key is removing the risk of a bad buying decision because no one wants to waste money on a dud.
5 Ways to Integrate Try-Before-You-Buy into your Marketing
#1: Samples and Giveaways – Ask your customers to ‘nominate’ new customers to receive free product, give bonus samples away with related products, or offer samples on your web site or giveaway sites. Offer potential clients a sample coaching session or a free 20-minute consultation.
#2: Trial Size – Take a cue from the beauty industry and allow your potential customers to buy a small, low cost version of your product or service. Think mini sizes, single serving portions, e-books or prerecorded webinars.
#3: Interactive Demos – Show your product or service in action via an interactive demo. Show how it would work for their situation or allow them to customize or manipulate the demo.
#4: Test Drive – If your business lends itself to making demo models or trial versions available to potential customers, get them take it for a ride, try it out and bring it back when they are done.
#5: Virtual Tours – Let your potential customers walk through your virtual door and get a guided tour. The perfect try-before-you-buy strategy for the hospitality and real estate industry!
