Three techniques to attract, retain, and delight your customers

by jbreazeale on February 25, 2010

Open sign

Via loop_oh on flickr

Are you open for business?

Every day I walk past vacant restaurants and half-empty shops, “victims” of the recession, of tough economic times, of changing priorities and values. Well, to all of that I say “Hooey!”*

*Yes, apparently I’ve turned into a cranky octogenarian.

For every restaurant that has seen its customers dwindle away, there’s another one out there welcoming them in. Offering specials that are amazing to the palate and sensitive on the wallet. Getting out of the kitchen to talk with (and listen to) their customers. Taking advantage of opportunities to try something new or to partner with like-minded businesses. Yes, some of them are using technology (newsletters, Twitter, Facebook), but that’s only a piece of the puzzle.

Think about it. What do your customers want? Not what they need, what they want. I need to eat breakfast, I want to eat my favorite breakfast burrito from Udi’s.

How can you let them know that:

You have what they want.

Menus are helpful. Menus with detailed descriptions are more helpful. Menus with detailed descriptions, plus pictures, plus write-ups from you and your customers are the most helpful.

You will help them get what they want.

How many obstacles do you place in your customer’s path? Can they easily find out where you are? When you’re open? If you’re kid-friendly/vegan/gluten-free/etc… (Hint: Communicate, communicate, communicate.)

They will feel confident and successful during (and after) this process.

What? Is talking about your customers’ feelings too woo-woo* for you? Remember how you felt ordering the first time at Starbucks? (or insert your favorite coffee shop here.) After countless visits, you now feel comfortable and confident.

*Note to self: try “too woo-woo” phrase with 3 yr old daughter tomorrow. Take bets whether I get fits of toddler giggles or the scarily pre-teen eye roll.

Most people will continue to frequent those places where they’ve learned the routine and know what to expect because it’s more comfortable knowing your expectations will be met than taking a risk on something new that might be a disappointment. No one goes to the Red Lobster in Times Square because they want great seafood.

Although, I’d recommend starting with the first two steps, don’t underestimate the importance of this final element. If you’re customers are buying a product/service that they want and feel good about buying (not just the product, the whole experience),  you’ve just put yourself miles ahead of your competition.  Now “I want a hot dog.” becomes “I want to go to Steve’s Snappin’ Dogs” or “Let’s go out for brunch.” becomes “Let’s go to Satchel’s.”

So, let’s say our farewell to those businesses that have been “victims” of these “tough economic times” and a hearty hello to those who continue to give us what we want while putting a smile on our face.*

*You know what I meant. Get your mind out of the gutter.

What do you think? What are examples, good and bad, that you’ve seen lately?

{ 0 comments }

Bring on the inspiration

by jbreazeale on September 9, 2009

goldfish jumping out of the waterI think the universe is trying to tell me something.

I recently completed a research project that provided sparked some creative business ideas. (Direction!)

I had dinner with friends on Sunday and in addition to a tummy full of s’mores, came away with plans to meet with a small group to hash out our stuckness and inertia around our fledgling businesses. (Action!)

And then I came across these posts (Inspiration!):

Why Creative Entrepreneurs Don’t Need to Worry About Free

from Charlie at Productive Flourishing

Although Charlie started with a discussion of the recent “Free” controversy/debate in the blogosphere, he really hooked me with the theme of “people-centered capitalism.” What a powerful force of change and of good this can be and I think we’re just getting starting.

Wouldn’t you rather support the business of a person you know instead of a nameless corporation?

Wouldn’t you rather buy something that’s unique and meaningful to you instead of something that satisfies the lowest common denominator?

And as a small business, aren’t you the one with the advantage?

You are the sales / marketing / R&D / customer service department – if you need to make a change, you can. You are the one who creates your business – make it something you and your customers love.

Do Interesting Things

from Leo Babuta (@zen_habits) at Zen Habits

How could I resist this:

The way we work is changing, the way we live has already changed. Entire industries are crumbling, and more are growing on their ruins. People are empowered to express themselves, to create, to become a part of a global conversation and transformation, in a way that has never existed before.

What will you do with that?

Do something.

Do something interesting.

Be a part of the conversation, and say something remarkable. Create something unique, new, beautiful. Build upon the works of others and transform it into your own…

What follows is a laundry list of ways you can take action including such small steps as “focus on less but do it better” and larger ones like “make the lives of others better.”

And if something as simple (I won’t say easy) as showing up in your life and being yourself (even if that includes “be[ing] a dork, but do[ing] it boldly”) can make a difference, then I can at least do that much.

What will you do?

Related articles by Zemanta

{ 0 comments }

You’re doing it wrong: Twitter (the command-and-control edition)

by jbreazeale on September 2, 2009

Twitter Bird MagicianEarlier this month, I wrote about a non-profit who wanted to jump onto the Twitter bandwagon without really understanding the tool or having a strategy for using it.

See “So you’re going to join Twitter…” for a refresher.

Well, they must not have been reading my blog (not surprising since my current audience would probably fit in my car at this point… um, anyway…) because look what I came across today:

Email on Twitter policy

Wow, so I just have to forward my suggestion for a tweet to a committee for approval (via email) and then if approved, someone else will post it for me?

{banging head against wall}

Looks like this account may be quickly headed for the “Yeah, I have a Twitter account. I logged on once, but it was lame so I haven’t been back” crowd and while it may be too late to get some strategic planning around social media in this case, maybe we can still manage to salvage a little bit of dignity.

Here’s how I would start…

First, figure out who your Twitter personalities are going to be.

Who has the connections into the community and into the organization and can write reasonably well? Talk to those people first and find out if they have a (reasonably active) Twitter account already.

If they aren’t active on Twitter, then ping your network for Twitter gurus and hook them up with your new writers for a mini Twitternship. That’s going to be the fastest way to get the newbies up to speed.

Second,  decide on some consistent content and put some tweets in the pipeline.

Even if you have experienced Twitter users writing for you, they’re still new to writing for your organization. Your org will have to develop it’s own personality over time and until then, you’ve got to start getting content out there.

Are you going to be conversational? Salesy/Advertising-focused? Are you trying to drive attendance to events or fundraisers?

Sign your account up for Tweetlater (or something similar) and start scheduling these tweets. This will be a consistent portion of your Twitter content, but should not replace your “live people” tweeting.

Finally, use TOOLS, not committees to manage activity.

Especially since this will be an organization account (versus a personal account or an @personATOrg account) with multiple people tweeting from one alias.

I understand, it’s a new tool and you don’t want people to go crazy with “teh Twitterz”, but asking for suggestions — for tweets — via email — for approval — by committee — is nuts.

Two options: CoTweet or HootSuite

What do you think? What other suggestions would you have to save this possible Twitter failure?

Related articles by Zemanta

{ 3 comments }

I love it. I hate it.

by jbreazeale on June 6, 2009

I’ve heard a lot of bad, mediocre, and good ideas being bantered around at Startup Weekend. It’s fascinating to me, hearing all of these ideas and watching them find traction (or not), but I’ve also noticed some interesting personal stuff as well.

As some of you  may know, I’m working on developing my own business and I’m getting closer and closer to defining what I want that business to be (no, I’m not going to reveal it yet, you’ll just have to wait).  And just when I’m starting to feel good about my idea/plan, I overhear someone else’s conversation – on a related topic – and, ick. Here’s someone else talking about ideas that, generally I believe in and would want to champion in my own business, but when I hear them talking about it, I just think ick, ick, ick.  What’s up with that? Is there something in their presentation of the ideas? Is is something about them personally? Do I not really believe in the concept/business, because if I did then wouldn’t hearing someone else talking about it be a *good* thing?

{ 0 comments }

Making your customers work harder doesn't actually help them (or you)

by jbreazeale on April 20, 2009

A few seemingly unrelated experiences over the weekend made this a must-write-about topic for today.  Summary: If your “helping” the customer makes it harder for them, then stop helping.

Example 1:  Chipotle’s “new” menu that’s trying to help, but is really just confusing to everyone (customers and staff).

My two-year old daughter is a Chipotle nut – she loves the black beans, cheese, chips, and guacamole (sometimes we manage to get other foods past her lips, but if she was ordering she’d just get those select items.)  And, one of the reasons we love Chipotle is that you can pretty much order any of their ingredients in any format and they’ll figure out how to charge you at the end. For example, if I order a burrito with rice, beans, and cheese they can ring that up as a “line-item veggie burrito” and save me $1+ over the standard veggie burrito (’cause unlike my daughter, I’m not a guac fan.)  Or, when she was just getting beans and guac, we would just pay for beans and guac.

So, imagine our surprise when we walked in to  our local Chipotle last week and… tada, there’s a kids menu. Hmm, okay I like that her meal would now come with a drink (previously, they didn’t have milk or little boxes of juice) and “kids”-sized chips (which is good because she was typically the chip-eater in the family), but how do I fit her black beans/cheese/chips/guacamole menu into one of the set menu choices?

This is a perfect example of trying to help (by providing some new and helpful choices on a kids menu) that ends up making it harder on your customers (if I just want these 4 items, how can I get them for the affordable kids menu price when those items aren’t specifically available in that combination on the kids menu?)  A much better solution would have been to model the kids menu after the standard adult menu with the option to order a la carte or in a meal-type package.   (“Mommy wants chicken soft tacos, Jane wants a kids’ soft taco meal with kids chips and milk.” )  This would allow the parents to order the same way and the workers to prepare food the same way for the adults or the kids, and would still provide great benefit for parents who want to round out their kids meal in an affordable fashion.  Chipotle, are you listening?

Example #2: Your new customers probably shouldn’t know more about your product than your sales or customer support staff.

I’ll be setting up a wiki for a local non-profit over the next few months, but we’re still in the early stages at this point and trying to determine the best way to set up and manage users (cost and structure).  We’d been working on the free version of the wiki for a few months, but would be moving to a paid version when we were ready to flip the switch and formally launch it to the organization.

Here’s what I’d come up with…

  • This would not be a “public” wiki. Only members of the organization would be permitted to view it, so the free “public” wiki plans were out.
  • This would be a hosted wiki.
  • We would have ~1800 users who would need at least “read-only” access to the wiki.
  • We would have 30-40 users who would need “read-write” access to the wiki.
  • Based on the plan we were considering, “users” were $8/mo/user. But, read-only users were 90% off of that price (<$1/mo/user), and there were discounts for “qualified” non-profits (nothing specifically stated what these discounts were).
  • Based on the plan we were considering, we could implement single sign-on for the wiki.
  • We could use a combination of generic and specific users (wikireader@abc.org, jane.doe@abc.org)
  • We would like to use the avaialble “free-trial” of the upgraded service so the organization leadership could work with the tool before launching it to the whole organization.

So, I “upgraded” the wiki – which required filling out a “contact us” form (into which I put the info above) and resulted in a sales call from the company. The first response I had from the sales guy… “With that many users, have you considered the public wiki option?” Um, no because as I mentioned in my email, it’s an intranet site.  On our first phone conversation, I reviewed the list above and managed to get info on the non-profit discount (typically 20%) and a 60-day free trial, but really no input or advice on how to accomplish the best balance of users and price. Instead, I got the typical pitch of “we have great customer service, that’s why we charge per user, because we have to support all of those users.”

Ok, I understand I’m paying for support and I think the product is valuable enough to pay for, so I do plan on paying *something*, but if you’re the wiki experts, can’t you suggest some ideas on implementation? If you’re doing so much work with educational institutions, small businesses, and other organizations with very limited funds, then how have those people rolled-out their wiki. Don’t expect me to believe that they either 1) paid for everyone, up-front, all at once, or 2) paid only for one or two people, and trickled them in over time.

Again, how were you trying to help me on this one? Either put all the info on your website and let me figure it out myself (in this case, they’re already about 90% there) or make me request a quote and then work your butt off to help me create a custom solution (or at least, custom-ish priced solution) for my organization.

Example #3:  Switching cell phone plans: Aaaaaa!!! or Aahhh…

We’ll have to switch to a new wireless plan before October, so I’ve been scoping out the options online and wow, what a pain! My husband and I are both tech-y people, but not-so-much cell phone people (example: after he washed his cell and its replacement within the span of two months, we switched to the ”free” phones on the cheapo plan) so trying to navigate through all of the options currently available is a nightmare. Except for one…

The Cricket Wireless site is a breath of fresh air! Okay, they don’t have a huge selection of phones, but at least I can understand their plans!

  • Feature 1+2 = $X
  • Feature 1+2+3 = $X+$5
  • Feature 1+2+3+4 = $X+$5+$5…
  • You can add features / buckets of minutes / etc. to any plan

Wow,  you mean I dont’ have to figure out who my favorite 5/10/15 people are? Whether I need 400/500/600/700/1000 minutes each month? How many calls I make on “nights and weekends” (or is that 7pm-7am?)  And, should I get XYZ phone from this  vendor or ABC phone from that one? Either way it’s a 2 yr contract. Ack! I just want to have a phone to carry with me that I can make and receive calls and text messages on.

I know the phone companies engage in this obfuscation to supposedly compete against each other (because it’s too hard or time consuming to make real comparisons against them), but I just can’t imagine that they’ll be able to sustain the camoflauge too much longer.  Until then, we’re going to go with the company that helps us to make a decision that we understand and can feel good about. Thanks, Cricket!

To sum it up…

I like the first two companies and have been long-time customers of each and even with the experiences above, I’m probably not going to stop eating my burritos or creating wikis. I’m new to Cricket, but they’re definitely starting to win me over.  The lesson I’ve learned is if you’re making customers significantly change their behavior, or work harder to make a decision, then you’re really not helping them. Provide clear, concise, and helpful information. If they need help, make sure you can help them (instead of ignoring or confusing them or reciting corporate babble). That’s how you provide real help and make your customers happy.

Related articles by Zemanta

{ 0 comments }

hippie and hardcore

March 5, 2009

I attended this fun and wacky business call with Havi (the hippie one) and Naomi (the hardcore, swearing one) yesterday and thought I’d jot down some of the bits that caught my attention…

Read the full article →