Ask any salesperson if they would like to call a list of 100 “good” prospects or talk to 5 customer referrals, they will crawl through sewage like Andy Dufresne for those referrals. Your customers will always be the best salespeople, and the secret to getting these referrals is to keep your customers happy. Easier said than done, right?
It seems everyone has heard at least one PR horror story about a company’s horrible customer service, and in many cases that level of service is the norm. Thankfully there’s still some “good guys”. The obvious examples are Disney and Zappos, and there are great books about their customer service practices (here and here, respectively). The less well-known companies that immediately come to my mind include Dyn Inc., the Reading Phillies, and now It’s a Man’s World. In all cases, these companies aren’t satisfied simply with having the best service or product in their industry, but they all want to make sure that their clients are truly happy. The secret to this type of customer service? Making it part of every employee’s job description.
Take Dyn Inc., for example. In the grand scheme of things DNS service is just an infrastructure tool, and not something that most people interact with on a regular basis. Dyn could simply supply a great service, send their bills, and be nothing but an IT tool. Instead, Dyn really wants their customers to be successful. The Dyn team is made of the type of people that will take an off-the-cuff frustration, and offer a solution. Without a doubt, I know that Kyle York, their VP of Sales & Marketing, will instantly offer his thoughts on shopping cart abandonment if you mention that it’s an issue. Does it have anything to do with DNS? No, but this is why they’re so good.
As I mentioned above, I am now adding It’s a Man’s World, a men’s image consultant, to my list of great customer service companies. Emmi Sorokin, founder of It’s a Man World, doesn’t just want her clients to look great, but to use their new fashion skills as a means to achieving something more for themselves. As I sat with Emmi recently (yes, I was getting fashion advice), it amazed me how happy she was about the things her clients had achieved after her help. The evaluation questions she asks during our initial meeting reflects her approach. It was all about me, what was happening in my life, and what my goals were. The questions about clothes and style came later, but it told me that she was getting aligned with me first, and then using her style abilities to help me reach those goals.
In both cases, Emmi & Kyle now have their customers raving about their services, all because they go above & beyond for them. If the goal of Inbound Marketing is to lower your cost-of-customer-acquisition (COCA), there is no better way to do that make a commitment to help your customers and make them happy. In the “trust economy“, their referrals & praises will be the best content you can produce.
photo courtesy of PKR Communications
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