On the flip side of that last blog post...
In my last blog post, I talked about a business that's been run into the ground, thanks to lousy customer service.
Today I want to look at a business that goes out of its way to earn customers for LIFE.
This came up in a conversation with some friends who all live in the same neighborhood. One friend was complaining because the last time she went to a well-known coffee shop, she was told she couldn't sit at one of their outside tables, because she hadn't made a purchase.
Her husband had bought a coffee from the shop... and so had her mother, who was in town visiting. But because SHE hadn't bought anything, she was told she wasn't allowed to sit at the table with the rest of her family!
Okay, so that was another example of horrible customer service. See how I worked that in? ;-)
The conversation soon turned to other coffee shops in the neighborhood. One in particular kept on being praised for its GREAT customer service.
One of my friends said he went to that coffee shop and wanted to order a nanaimo bar to go with his coffee.
(A nanaimo bar is a kind of chocolate square, in case you don't have them where you live.)
Unfortunately, the shop was sold out of nanaimo bars that day. When my friend mentioned how disappointed he was, the owner of the store walked out of the store, went to the bakery across the street, bought a nanaimo bar there -- and then came back and gave it to my friend free of charge!
Needless to say, that coffee shop now has a customer for life. PLUS they have a walking, talking advertisement in my friend, who raves about them and tells the nanaimo bar story whenever coffee shops come up in conversation.
There were probably eight of us who were involved in that conversation that day. And I promise you, all eight of those people will NEVER buy anything at the first coffee shop again... but they'll frequently go to the coffee shop with the owner who gave away the free nanaimo bar.
And -- what's more -- they'll tell all their friends to go there, too.
That's pretty good for a two-dollar investment on the owner's part, don't you think?
Today I want to look at a business that goes out of its way to earn customers for LIFE.
This came up in a conversation with some friends who all live in the same neighborhood. One friend was complaining because the last time she went to a well-known coffee shop, she was told she couldn't sit at one of their outside tables, because she hadn't made a purchase.
Her husband had bought a coffee from the shop... and so had her mother, who was in town visiting. But because SHE hadn't bought anything, she was told she wasn't allowed to sit at the table with the rest of her family!
Okay, so that was another example of horrible customer service. See how I worked that in? ;-)
The conversation soon turned to other coffee shops in the neighborhood. One in particular kept on being praised for its GREAT customer service.
One of my friends said he went to that coffee shop and wanted to order a nanaimo bar to go with his coffee.
(A nanaimo bar is a kind of chocolate square, in case you don't have them where you live.)
Unfortunately, the shop was sold out of nanaimo bars that day. When my friend mentioned how disappointed he was, the owner of the store walked out of the store, went to the bakery across the street, bought a nanaimo bar there -- and then came back and gave it to my friend free of charge!
Needless to say, that coffee shop now has a customer for life. PLUS they have a walking, talking advertisement in my friend, who raves about them and tells the nanaimo bar story whenever coffee shops come up in conversation.
There were probably eight of us who were involved in that conversation that day. And I promise you, all eight of those people will NEVER buy anything at the first coffee shop again... but they'll frequently go to the coffee shop with the owner who gave away the free nanaimo bar.
And -- what's more -- they'll tell all their friends to go there, too.
That's pretty good for a two-dollar investment on the owner's part, don't you think?
Comments
Hi Derek,
Here's the challenge I'm facing. I'm testing the parenting market to see if I can offer an ebook to help parents with their kids' problem behavior and I'm frustrated trying to get the impressions that Google projects I should be getting.
I'm using surveys on a dozen exact match keywords. I haven't used phrase matching or general keywords because I hear survey results are better with exact matches and Google says I should still be getting hundreds of clicks a day.
My adword copy is getting CTRs ranging from 1% to 6% (averaging a little over 2%). My survey-landing page converts 6% to 66% (averaging around 12% over time). I'm only paying a little over $0.50 for a conversion. So everything looks good. Except my number of impressions.
I'm getting about 1% of the impressions that Google predicts I will. And I've been going at it for two weeks or more. I haven't been advertising on the content network because my CTRs on that network have always been terrible.
What do you suggest I try?
Thanks,
Tim
Posted by: Tim Dawes | October 16, 2007 02:33 PM
Excellent tips, Derek! I think what you said about strong guarantees helping sales is true. It's a part of customer service, right?
Posted by: Lavern | October 18, 2007 02:38 PM
Derek,
Great story about the coffee shop. Reminds me of a visit to a sandwich bar in Oxford (England, where I went to University.)
The man next to me ordering a sandwich (an American tourist, by the way), asked for some lemon juice on it. The server said "certainly sir, that will just be 1 minute", and ran out of the shop, down the road, to the greengrocers.
The man asked me "Where's she gone?"
So I said "Oh, to buy a lemon."
His response was, well, positive but unprintable.
Now, here's the rub... I can still remember that incident SEVENTEEN YEARS LATER, and I wasn't even the customer, just the next guy being served.
Guess which sandwich bar I like to go to when I'm in Oxford now :-)
Posted by: Mark Harrison | October 19, 2007 10:13 AM
Derek,
Almost a similar tale about a business that's been run into the ground that I bumped into. I was staying in a hotel in another state of my country a couple of weeks earlier.
Can you imagine a 4-Star hotel couldn't loan me an umbrella when it was pouring outside? If not for the quick thinking duty manager who rectified the blunder that night, when I complained to her, what would the repurcussion be if I were to broadcast this incident to the world? Instead I commended the Duty Manager when I e-mailed a letter to the hotel when I got back home!
Posted by: Abdul | October 23, 2007 09:43 AM
Ironically, most businesses don't care much about the ROI of 'two-dollar-ten-hundred-meter investment'.
I once read about a misplacement of electronic pricing. Instead of correcting the wrong $67 tag to the $97 tag, the shop owner maintained the wrong $67 one and let the crowd made exciting purchases.
Posted by: Indratno Widiarto | October 28, 2007 07:42 PM