Comments
Do something good for one customer, they’ll tell 100 others
Thanks Nik for the heads up to this article about looking after your customers. The founder of Amazon.com has always had a love affair with his customers, despite customer love not being a general metric of business success.
The example was of a xmas present gone astray in the post and the absolute non-hesitation of an Amazon staff member to send out a new one immediately at no cost. They made a customer for life and have now sparked a bunch of people to spread the news (I am wondering if maybe the old 1 tells 100 customers is incorrect these days – people can tell thousands of others!). So what if Amazon lost a couple of hundred bucks on a missing item, they will have made that back in the five minutes it took for the guy who got another one to tell his first five friends.
When people talk about creating customers who love you, it always sounds a little contrived, like you only want them to love you so they spend more… But I find that it’s more than that. I got an email this morning from a customer who simply wrote to thank us and say how proud he was of his new website. It made my day. Other customers who ring to ask about something, then stick around chatting for a bit are also cool. I’m fascinated by the business who we help and the people who build them and feel like I’ve made some good friends out from the initial customer/supplier relationships.
Having customers you enjoy working with is one of the reasons we come to work in the morning and the key reason to keep us inspired and excited about the work we do. This means it’s in our interests to keep our customers really happy. I suspect people like Jeff Bezos from Amazon approach their business in much the same way and because their key aim is to have fun and make friends while working, they’ve been mighty successful.
I think what some business forget (and so do we in the bad times) is that, like the movie stars say, ‘without your fans, you’re nothing’. on those days when you’re rushing around, everything is falling down around you and you can’t quite see how you’re going to fix everything, I think the key lesson the likes of Amazon teach us is to prioritse keeping your customers happy, then go from there.
Hello, my name is Natalie, I have a business called 
January 25th, 2008 at 5:43 am
And its easy to be genuinely nice to your customers – not just doing a good job but really looking out for them. The Zappos story from last year is a classic example.
January 25th, 2008 at 8:18 am
Wow, I just read the story linked by Rob Coup about Zappos. Eerie, since I was planning to comment about Zappos myself. While the story of the flowers takes the cake, my experience with Zappos was similarly thoughtful and personal. I ordered shoes through them on a weekday evening from home, and received this – no lie – at work, before noon, THE NEXT DAY. Unfortunately, they fit bigger than anticipated. On their site, the only option is to return the shoes and purchase another – not to do an even exchange. I emailed them before returning the shoes to see if an even exchange was even possible – they responded super-promptly and said they’d be happy to exchange the shoes once they received the originals. I sent them back the same day I received them and…drumroll please…received the new pair the next morning. It usually takes twice as long just to place an order anywhere else.
Early the next week, I received a card at work. When I opened it, it was a HANDWRITTEN Thank-you note from Zappos that read, “Hi Claire, It was my pleasure assisting you with your exchange order with Zappos.com. Fitzwell shoes are always great! And I hope the size 8 fits perfectly for you! :) Feel free to contact us anytime with any questions! Have a wonderful day! -Allyson”
Well, blow me over.
They certainly didn’t need to send me a thank you card – particularly a handwritten one – as they already had me at one-day-turnaround. This personal touch, however, is what keeps me shopping at Zappos, even if I find a better price somewhere else. Additionally, after showing the card to my co-workers (or co-lleagues, Nat) they were so impressed that you can now see new boxes from Zappos in my department on a monthly basis. :)
January 26th, 2008 at 1:03 am
That’s why I’m in love with the companies I am in love with and everybody knows it. Barnes & Nobles versus Borders (it’s Borders I’m in love with everytime, baby), Office Max versus Office Depot (Office Depot takes the cake for caring about it’s customers), Costco, P. Terry’s (local), I could go on and on… but I won’t : ) just wanted to prove your point as Claire effectively did : ) ! Hehe.
January 26th, 2008 at 9:26 pm
Wow, that’s an amazing story!
I was talking to someone this morning about how, often we get too caught up in respecting other people’s privacy to make a gesture when one is needed. I remember on some of my most down times, it has been strangers in shops who have picked me up. Once the guy at the library wiped my fine for no reason except he was a nice guy, it just happened to coincide with an uber bad time in my life and made my day. You ALWAYS remember those people and businesses.