Category Archives: Marketing

great customer gift

A great customer deserves a special gift continuously

in Customer Service, Marketing

great customer gift

But that gift can’t be that obvious.

It’s always interesting to me how some organizations delight their customers. Or how they assume their customers will be delighted.

The image above is a promotional email from Scientific American Book Club, it was delivered to my inbox with the title: A great customer deserves a special gift like one of those solid wood outdoor playhouses. Your clients who are also coffee lovers may appreciate gifts like a coffee mug funny. You may also consider giving out custom office supplies; visit sites like https://www.swagify.com/custom-office-supplies to see more options.

The title got my attention, but the offer didn’t!

Why? Because their offer makes me feel like it’s a hard sell. It’s repetitive and predictable. It actually annoyed me. I mean, are book clubs still relevant? I’m sure in some cases they still are but I’ve never actually felt like I’m in the SCIAM Book Club.

Also I can get those books at Amazon delivered to my Kindle for less. The other problem is I’ve been a SCIAM Book Club member for two years and have so far bought two books from them and it wasn’t even by choice. I was forced to.

Meanwhile, as an Amazon Prime member I don’t pay taxes and get free two day shipping on most orders. And on top of that, Amazon just threw in free online video streaming rights to about 5,000 TV and movie titles. All that for $79/month.

Am I delighted? You bet!

So what gives?

The best way to delight a customer is to exceed and/or break their expectations. A type of gift that breaks/exceeds expectations is the one that isn’t directly related the offering a customer expects. What do I mean? For example, us Amazon Prime members didn’t expect to get free online video streaming with our subscription when we signed up. It would’ve been more common to expect a lower price or quicker delivery (incremental value) on our purchases. While that may make us happy it certainly would not have exceeded our expectations.

The element of surprise is the ultimate equalizer

Think about it this way, when you are dating a girl or guy everything starts out really fast and you just want to do everything for your partner to keep them interested. You want to keep them entranced. But as that relationship grows and reality settles in, most of the time, that ‘want’ disappears. Your partner knows your tendencies and knows what to expect. You become predictable. A bore.

The way to break this pattern is to do something unexpected, to surprise.

And so it is the same with the relationship between a customer and an organization. But in this case, the customer is the receiver and the organizations has to constantly be surprising and delighting. Otherwise you risk becoming a bore, predictable, more of the same.

In a world of sameness, promoting sameness is not a viable strategy. Get that out of your head and break the pattern.

 

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Fast response is the new normal in customer service

in Customer Service, Marketing

Do you know what kind of service drives people crazy? Poor attention.

According to research from Zendesk 82% of people stop doing business with a company because of poor customer service. And poor attention is in my opinion is where it all starts because nobody likes being ignored.

Here are a few things that happened to me last week…

This morning I received an email from Sxipper, a password management program for Firefox that I used, replying to a ticket I submitted over a month ago. Yes, that’s right. It’s been over a month and they just answered.

But get this, it’s just a reply that they’ve seen my email. Not a solution. Well guess what, they’re too late.

Since I submitted my inquiry and didn’t get a fast answer I changed to another provider, LastPass.

Result: Ni modo, you lost out. If you would have answered quickly I would still be using your product.

Earlier in the week I noticed that bit.ly was not functioning when clicking on links through Tweetdeck. So I asked if anybody else was having the same issue and two minutes later I got a response from the folks at bit.ly:

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/bitly/statuses/38689020481372160″]

Result: Now I know what’s going on. Great! It wasn’t that hard.

Another example, this past week I switched the ‘share buttons’ on this blog to AddThis. Not everything went smoothly, the buttons were not showing up initially. I checked with them on Twitter but they don’t seem to use it as a customer service channel, so I went over to their forums and posted my inquiry and got a response within a few hours. They pointed out that I was missing some code for it to work, told me what I needed to do and they fixed it for me. This wasn’t their problem, it was my themes problem.

Yes, AddThis fixed a problem that wasn’t theirs so that I could use their plugin. BEA-utiful!

Result: I post about how cool their plugin is and recommend you use it too.

Worst is not responding

When you don’t respond, people are going take it as a ‘‘we don’t care about you’ signal. The result is they’re going to tell their friends about how much you suck and will switch products to someone ‘who does care’ about their needs. It’s that simple!

Even if you have a high cost to switch (telcos), people will put their money down to switch because in the long run they much prefer not to deal with you. High switching costs are no longer an excuse for ignoring people. Get over it.

Getting it right

Customer Service is the new marketing because your customers don’t live on your time, they live on theirs. You have to acknowledge that they have control to tell others if you’re the best or the worst. And if you have a web presence (which you should), customers expect you to be there for them if an issue arises. There are countless ways to provide support and answers such as forums, Twitter, phone and email but still, in most cases people still prefer to talk to a live person for customer service.

Do you really want to talk to them? How committed are you? Do you see customer service as an added cost or as a difference maker?

While fast response is not a new idea, it’s execution is. The world has changed and so has customer service. People are on social networks talking to their friends about either what a great or bad service they got with you. One of them can win you loyal customers, the other one can make you look like the worst business on the face of the planet. Which one do you want to be? The balls on your court.

Fast response when we have a problem. Today and tomorrow, that’s what we expect from companies who’s products or services we use.

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Laser focused products are more emotional

in Innovation, Marketing, Strategy

steve jobs

This post isn’t about Steve Jobs, it’s about emotion and how to create it with your product.

When I was a kid I would spend endless hours reading magazines at supermarkets or bookstores. From PC Magazine, Sports Illustrated, Game Pro, National Geographic, Road & Track, SLAM, you name it. At one point I had subscriptions to 15 different magazines that I got in the mail, my mom wasn’t too happy about it. And she also wasn’t happy because I kept them all well after I read them.

Out of all the magazines I read, the one’s I look more forward to reading were the ones about cars. I just loved (and still do) reading Road & Track’s car reviews because of how they described their car experience, I can still remember some of the words used in the review of the McLaren F1.

Words like: ‘staggering power’ when pushing the accelerator, ‘stratospheric’ when talking about horsepower, ‘opera-esque’ when describing the sound of the engine, ‘astonishing’ when describing the car…you get the picture. So what’s the big deal? Well the fact that I’m telling you about it today and remember it is telling. Emotions are hard to forget and even though I’ve never driven these cars, the vivid descriptions make me feel as though I almost did.

I know what you’re thinking, we already know benefits trump features. Yup, but how?

Focus.

Jeremy Clarkson, host and source of Top Gear, is a like a little kid when talking about cars. It’s all emotion. Even if you aren’t a car fanatic you’ll love them after hearing Clarkson, just like in the video below where he drives the Ferrari Enzo. Tell me it doesn’t get your blood moving?

Did you notice how he mentions the word ‘focus’ to the describe how the car’s interior doesn’t distract you from driving? If you own and iPod, iPhone or iPad then you know what I mean. Steve Jobs is the master at creating emotions for Apple products. He makes it sound so genuine because his products satisfy him. So when he gives a keynote speech, he’s like a little kid talking to you about his new toy. Emotional!

Google did the same thing with Chrome. It’s laser focused on enabling us to browse the web faster. The user interface has only what’s necessary to browse and it makes you almost feel like the browser isn’t even there. That’s focus!

Another example I’ll give you to chew on is how Super Bike Magazine describes how the new Kawasaki ZX-10R ‘Ninja’ makes it’s driver feel: confident. Confident that you can get the best lap times and win the race. That’s what they really care about.

And with that last paragraph I get to the intent of this post: Focused products are more emotional. People don’t care about your products features, they care about what it does for them. And the way to do that is by making your product laser focused on satisfying that job.

In the Enzo’s case the job is driving, in the iPod’s case it’s carrying all your music in your pocket. They eliminated all the things that can ‘distract’ from satisfying that job.

Thoughts? Do you think products that are laser focused on satisfying a specific job more emotional?

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Unconventional marketing strategy starts with ‘what not to-be’

in Creativity, Marketing, Strategy

The element of surprise is the ultimate equalizer. Remember that? Here’s another clue, check it out…

I was reading 99 Percent’s interview with the founder of Slice Perfect, Miki Agrawal, an unorthodox pizzeria in NY. The interview is all about how he ‘surprised himself’ but the last question (about their marketing strategy) reveals an interesting answer:

It’s about being unorthodox, it’s about how you stand out. When you think about branding, you have to think about every touch point of a business. You can’t just change the ingredients because that’s not enough. You have to change the packaging, the marketing materials, the web experience. Everything has to change to create an impactful experience.

So we try to NOT look like a pizza place, but still have that familiar feeling. Our packaging is long, rectangular boxes; we serve the piece in four bite-sized pieces on a sushi plate. It’s a neat and clean, pristine experience; it’s not like you’re picking up this giant pizza slice. It slows down your eating. You’re not shoveling something into your mouth. You allow your stomach to catch up to your brain. It also promotes sharing. I can order a different pizza from you, and we can share.

So those are three differentiating elements: it’s neater and cleaner, it slows down eating, and it promotes sharing. So it’s a different experience.

Bingo! Meaningful difference is what I got from that answer. Anybody who hears that will ‘get it’ right away. What’s also awesome, is the way he puts it: We try NOT to look like a pizza place. That’s a good way to ‘surprise yourself’ and shatter expectations.

Want to do the same?

Every business wants to offer a great customer experience — but what exactly does “customer experience refer to? And why is it so important?

Many businesses think that if you offer a good product at a reasonable price, you’ve done enough to please the customer. But that’s not the case. A business must consider many elements of the overall customer experience in order to ensure customer satisfaction.

The key to customer retention is the customer experience, so let’s dive into what that means and how to make it work for you.

Overview: What is the customer experience?

The term “customer experience” refers to the entire journey a customer has with your company, from interacting with your sales team to experiencing the product to working out issues with customer support — and, hopefully, buying from you again.

A complete customer experience is vital for a business, as even if a company succeeds at one element — i.e., a great product — the customer may still end up dissatisfied if, say, they have a negative experience with customer support.

In order for a company to be successful, leadership must work on the totality of the customer experience rather than focus on individual elements.

Customer experience vs. customer service: What’s the difference?

Customer experience differs from customer service in that the former covers a much broader part of a company’s interaction with the customer, whereas customer service only deals with one aspect of it — the human-to-human interaction between the customer and customer service professionals.

Customer service is an important part of the customer experience, but it is only one element, and you need all elements working together to create a satisfying customer experience.

3 benefits of delivering a great customer experience

Improving your customer’s experience will provide many benefits to your company, but three benefits in particular will have a significant impact.

1. More sales

The first benefit is obvious: Create a great customer experience, and your customers will reward you by buying more products and referring you to their friends and family. A great customer experience results in good word of mouth, which is one of the most powerful marketing forces — and arguably the hardest to master.

2. Lower marketing costs

When customers love you, they do a lot of your marketing work with the help of websites using Shopify for you. Some companies rely entirely on word of mouth for sales, and that saves a lot of money in the marketing budget. If you’re in search for affordable marketing services, sites like https://www.landscapemarketingpros.co/services are definitely worth a visit.

You won’t have to blanket media with expensive advertising campaigns if customers are flocking to you because of the great experience you offer.

3. A loyal customer base

Companies with a loyal customer base have a more stable income stream and aren’t as beholden to the roller coaster of the market, fluctuating ad rates, and other outside forces that impact your bottom line.

A company with a great customer experience has a steady, reliable business model that can weather just about any storm thanks to customers that have their backs.

Strategies to improve the customer experience

But how do you go about improving the customer experience? It’s not just about working on your team’s customer service skills — it’s an involved process, and one that takes time if you do it right. However, the results are well worth it. Implement these strategies to maximize your results, get the best results by working with a professional user research company.

1. Create customer profiles

You can’t create a good customer experience unless you know your customers’ needs. And the best way to understand your customers is to meet with your team and brainstorm some customer profiles.

A customer profile is essentially how you would describe a certain type of customer. Draw up a description of the customer, describing qualities such as typical age, job title, income, interests, and anything else you find relevant.

Give the customer profile a name, like “Joe” or “Maria.” That way, you can easily refer to the customer type in meetings by simply mentioning their name. Your customer experience strategy should include at least two or three customer profiles.

Tip: Keep your customer profiles narrowly focused. Customer profiles that are too broad have little value and won’t allow you to create the tailored experience your customers crave. And if that means you have to create a dozen customer profiles, maybe your business has too broad of a focus overall.

2. Draw up a customer journey

Ask yourself, “If I were this customer, what would my ideal customer experience be like from start to finish?” Then draw up this journey for each of your customer profiles. Outline each step in the customer journey, from encountering an ad to purchasing to enjoying the product. Describe how each step ideally plays out.

How you visualize this customer journey is up to you. It could be a spreadsheet that describes what the customer is thinking and what action they might take — and how you want to change it — or it could be a flowchart of some sort.

Tip: Crowdsource the customer journey with your staff. Get all stakeholders to weigh in. They may notice things you do not, such as a desired customer interaction with the sales team you weren’t aware of.

3. Reward loyalty

A loyalty or rewards program may seem expensive, but it’s a lot cheaper than a marketing program to find new leads and convert them into paying customers. And it doesn’t always have to be a discount — you can reward customers in other ways, like offering extra features or exclusives.

It all comes down to understanding your customer and what they value — this is where your customer profiles come in handy. What kind of extra value could you offer to your customers that they would appreciate? If you know the answer, you’ll keep your customers coming back.

Tip: Narrowly tailor your rewards program to your best customers rather than showering your entire customer base with goodies. The point is to encourage loyalty rather than try to bribe everyone.

Here’s an exercise for you:

  • Write ‘let’s try NOT to be like <insert your category here>’ on the biggest whiteboard in your office where everyone in your organization can see it.
  • Next, let everyone know that you have a mission today to shake things up, tell them about how the message on the whiteboard will help you do that.
  • Next, invite your peers to contribute ideas on all the possible ways you can be the opposite of your category. Some people will laugh, others may already have some ideas hidden somewhere in their brains. You can collect these ideas by email, on an internal wiki, internal blog or pieces of papers. What matters is that you do it.
  • Once done, collect all these ideas and have a few people help you cluster them around ‘themes’ and put them where everyone can see.
  • Next, it’s show time! Via votes (number of ‘likes’) decide which ideas are ‘meaningful’ and ‘doable’. It’s important that you get the list down to only a few things that really ‘make a difference’, this will be tricky but very important.
  • Next, it’s time to action plan your ideas.

I know this is a fairly simplistic list, the intent is not to make it an activity so complex that people will lose interest. Remember, you’re asking people to get uncomfortable!

Thoughts?

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Useful and valuable

in Innovation, Marketing, Strategy

An innovation happens when an idea is both useful and valuable to the customer.

One of the things that stuck with me from reading Braden Kelley’s book Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire is something that is rarely mentioned when deciding on an idea to execute: the distinction between useful and valuable.

Usually we have products and services that are useful but not valuable. But then again what’s useful and valuable to you is not the same for me. For example, Evernote is both useful and valuable to me because I can write, save, edit, clip notes and access them from wherever I am. Evernote is a tool for the information obsessed like me. I’m on the fanatic end of their users where I can’t imagine going back to not using Evernote.

On the other hand, an opposite example is Facebook,while useful is not really valuable to me. I could care less if Facebook disappears tomorrow. But if Twitter disappeared tomorrow I would feel empty. Twitter is both useful and valuable to me for many reasons.

Like I said, this might not be the same for you.…

Creative stretching

in Creativity, Marketing

Search engine optimization becomes more and more exciting because the years pass. Some would rather use the word “frustrating” rather than exciting, except for SEO professionals who live by these things , it’s nothing in need of exciting. It’s sort of a puzzle that never completely closes as new pieces continually resurface over time. Once you think that you’ve it near perfect another piece flies out and you’ve got to work out where it fits.

As things change and it becomes more and harder to urge the eye of the search engines and appear on the coveted first page of results, SEO experts like SponsoredLinX become more creative. This word “creative” is getting tons of buzzes immediately and if you read blogs and websites dedicated to SEO you’ll hear it tons within the coming months. This is often because creativity is required to form it with the strict rules being pushed by Google and therefore the other top search engines lately. You can also visit a helpful site like https://www.updigital.ca if you’re looking for professionals to implement game changing services for your business! For Search Engine Optimisation information you can visit to seonexus.com webpage and see different blog related to SEO.

So, what are we talking about once we say Los Angeles SEO experts are becoming creative with the SEO? This is often a touch confusing once you first encounter the concept, especially if you recognize that the foremost important a part of program optimization is putting out valuable, entertaining content with well placed, well-chosen keywords.

If you are not quite sure what to do with your internet marketing business or if it seems as if your strategies are not working, getting the help of the professionals through agencies like Freshlinks can be a big help to you and your business. Read more about Freshlinks and see if they are the right fit for your business. Buy backlinks help you spell the missing keywords to your success, it can also provide you with meaningful strategies that can help you in making your business grow. The analysis that these agencies can provide you will be very useful for your future undertaking and when everything seems to be going wrong for your business, these companies can provide their services to assist you in knowing how to improve your strategies and what to do to make. You can check here for more information about the internet marketing agency.

Content remains vital in SEO, as are your chosen keywords. Yet, you’ll need to get very creative together with your use of keywords and therefore the way you’re employed them round the content to win at the program optimization game within the future.

For instance, one very fashionable news site has been getting tons of buzz for his or her creative use of slideshows containing keywords. This site takes keywords that appear because the most ordinarily searched words on the highest search engines for a given day and incorporates those words into an enquiry engine. you will not find any real content on these slideshows, but there are pictures that coordinate with the keywords.

The slideshow might not necessarily correspond to any real content on the location associated with those keywords, but it gets the location to the highest of the search engines for those chosen keywords which results in greater traffic and recognition for his or her site.

Is this cheating? Some would argue that it’s , but it’s what’s being mentioned as “creative’ by many of us today. Strategies like these pays off success , but as long as you recognize where the lines are don’t cross over them enough to be nailed by Google.

If you employ these creative strategies on a site that gives absolutely no value to visitors, it is not getting to really work for you and therefore the lines are getting to be crossed before later. If on the opposite hand, you work with an SEO Belfast company who can incorporate a number of these creative strategies on a site full of great content that’s entertaining and rewarding, you’ll quickly rise to the highest of the search engines and obtain the traffic you deserve.

Today, program optimization requires you to use keywords in very creative ways without crossing lines and being considered worthless or a scammer to the search engines. it is a delicate dance that a lot of will fail at while the simplest experts rise to the highest .

To @Dell: Please pay attention to your customers

in Behavior, Customer Service, Marketing

I apologize in advance, this is a rant.

I’ve been a loyal Dell customer for 7 years now, never had a problem until a few weeks a go. In the last month and a half I’ve been without my laptop for 4 weeks. A laptop that is only 10 months old has been to Dell twice. It’s had the mainboard, the fan, the heatsink and even the keyboard replaced. Can’t figure that last one out but ok thank you, too bad the real problem I sent it back to you isn’t fixed yet.

jorge's xps 1640

BEA-utiful!

Don’t want to get into details as to why my laptop has been to repair center twice but let’s just say that XPS 1640’s have ‘loud fan’ issues and mine got the bug after I sent it the first time to Dell. Getting a bug on your laptop isn’t a very nice thing. I had to go to the Virus Removal Australia company to get the bug removed. It didn’t have this problem when I bought in December so why all of the sudden does it load the system fan even when idle? You have no answer. Worse yet this has been going on for awhile so it’s not like it’s a new issue, yet you didn’t let me know about it. You said you would fix it, didn’t tell me how but ok sounds good I’ll wait it out again since it’s under warranty.

A few days after I requested a dispatch to send my laptop back for another round I got an email from one of your XPS tech support reps asking me to send detailed information on what the problem is, which I gladly did. Anyway, I get my laptop back today and the problem persists and it makes me feel as though you changed the parts and sent it back to me without taking the time to see if the problem was fixed.

What’s worse about all of this is how you’ve wasted my time and yours too.

Why don’t you call me and ask me what’s wrong with it while you have it with you to make sure you’re covering all the bases? Why don’t you send me an email to tell me what you’re going to do to it similar to when a person goes into surgery? Why do you just send it back to me with the problem knowing that I’m probably going to call you back and request it get fixed again?

I could go on and on with questions but the point is you’re ignoring me, your loyal customer. And that my dear Dell is a BIG no-n0!

Anyways, tomorrow I’ll be calling you back with the same request. I hope you’re in it for another round because I plan on getting  my laptop back to the state it was when I bought it, flawless!

Good nite for now, I’ll let you catch your breath and meditate on how this affects your future relationship with me 😉

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