Why is it that we work so hard at the simplest things only to lose customers? Usually it’s because we haven’t bothered to simply treat customers the way we would want
Getting personal and the Golden Rule in business
Why is it that we work so hard at the simplest things only to lose customers? Usually it’s because we haven’t bothered to simply treat customers the way we would want to be treated. IBM Director of Marketing Tami Cannizzaro gives a great example:
As a consumer, you know in an instant when you’re dealing with a company that doesn’t have it together. We’ve all been there: “Pleeeassse, don’t ask for my serial number again and the spelling of my name and my account numbers. Know me. That’s all I ask.”
via Personal ad: Marketer seeking brand advocates – Digital Age of Marketing.
As small business owners and managers we have the opportunity to get to know many of our customers on that personal level. Of course, remembering the customers serial number is a job for a well organized system – whether it’s a computerized Customer Relationship Management system or the box of notecards that a rare bookstore owner I know uses. But the computers, the files and the paperwork are no substitute for the smiling faces with your name on their lips and your basic needs in their head…and heart.
Whether it’s a server at the restaurant asking if you want “the usual, Jim” or the manager of the UPS Store saying, “Hi, I’ve got a package for you, Tom” when you walk in the door, that’s the personal touch that makes us loyal customers. Deep down, we’d all love to be Norm from Cheers with a bar full of people shouting our name, our favorite spot at the bar reserved and the beer in place before we make it to our seat.
We may not be able to make every entrance a Cheers! moment for our customers, but we should all make getting to know our customers our number one priority and make sure that our employees know it’s the number one priority for them as well.
Social networking is about human contact
The Gooder Group’s Real Estate Rainmaker website recently featured 17 Survival Tips For Facebook Marketing .
Two of them really stood out:
6. Focus on engagement, not Likes.
15. Never buy bulk Likes.
On Facebook and Twitter it’s easy to get caught up in statistics such as numbers of Likes or Followers, but you can have great stats and no sales. For the small business, social networks are all about human contact. A Facebook post by a loyal customer is just the tech version of good old fashioned word of mouth. (And somebody posting negatively is probably even worse than the old version if you don’t react. But fortunately, if handled politely and appropriately may be easier to recover from since it’s easier to track.)
So, if you’re not focusing on racking up the ReTweets, what should you be focused on? Two things:
- Encouraging your loyal customers to recommend you
- Engaging with the online opinion leaders in your market
Unless your selling social networking, who matters much more than how many.
A check in with a positive comment from someone with an established reputation paints the picture you want to paint of your business and like a picture, it’s worth a thousand Likes.
This is how you build sales
These 11 Great Customer Service Stories from Business Insider are what building long term sales and customers for life are all about. Here’s a personal favorite:
Sainsbury’s, a grocery store in the U.K., must have been pretty amused when they received a letter from a three-year-old girl named Lily.
“Why is tiger bread called tiger bread?” she asked, referring to one of their bakery items. “It should be called giraffe bread.”
Lily was just being observant – the pattern on the bread does resemble a giraffe more than a tiger. To everyone’s surprise, Chris King, a customer service manager at the chain, responded. “I think renaming tiger bread giraffe bread is a brilliant idea – it looks much more like the blotches on a giraffe than the stripes on a tiger, doesn’t it? It is called tiger bread because the first baker who made it a looong time ago thought it looked stripey like a tiger. Maybe they were a bit silly.” He enclosed a gift card, and the bread was renamed earlier this year.
I found this article by way of economist Craig Newmark who added, “…I’d think it would be worthwhile for many companies to cut a little of their mostly stupid advertising and increase expenditures on services like these. ”
He’s absolutely right. If you can devote an extra 1 to 10% to advertising or chop 5-50% off your prices, you could make your customer’s day better instead. The bonus, aside from increased sales, is that when we handle our business this way we get to deal with happy customers and happy employees and go home feeling good about our work at the end of the day.
Social Media and Small Business Advantage #1: Personality
Think that the big corporations with the big budgets have the edge in online marketing? You should probably think again. Forbes writer T.J. McCue’s article of 19 Things Successful People Do on Social Media reads like a list of small business advantages. #7: They are genuine and #15: Success in social media demands that you get personal describe two of the biggest reasons that customers choose the locally owned business over the corporation. Social media just magnifies the difference.
#15: Success in social media demands that you get personal.
I find it laughable that CEOs join social networks only to post about their companies. There are , no doubt, some high profile CEOs that people follow regardless, but most knowledgeable executives understand you have to get personal. That above lighthearted joke about what you had for lunch is not what I mean. “People don’t fall in love with hex colors and logos — they fall in love with people”
As a small business owner or manager, your customers want your personality in the mix, though they may not explicitly say so. So, don’t share every trip to grocery store (except on Foursquare), but do share that photo of the new pet or the Little League victory in the family.
hat tip to SmallBiz Counsel Daily
