It’s not the one size fits all solution. Social Media can’t fix your lousy product, your bad network that consistently drops my calls, nor can it fix the absolutely wretched customer service your company insists on spewing out.

You should know that I am currently breaking my 24hr rule. The rule that says, “when made upset, I must not open my gob about it for 24hrs.  If after 24hrs I feel so inclined, then so be it.”

When a business takes money in exchange for a product or service, there is a perceived value for the exchange. If the balance is off, the model breaks down. When a company takes money in exchange for a mediocre product and appalling customer service… the customer has a decision to make:

1.  Return everything and go somewhere else (provided the business accomodates that sort of service),

2. Put up and shut up (confiding in ten different friends later that day over dinner about the horrible experience)

3. Go social on that company’s brand.

Assuming it really is far more cost effective to keep a customer than find a new one, why are we so hell bent on throwing money after bad money on marketing and BOGO promotions to get new customers when our existing customers would return, bring friends and go up in value if we’d just get a few home basics right. Eg. Give them a little love.

• Hire people who actually like people.
• Incent your team to meet customer service targets.
• Use an infrastructure conducive to meeting the needs of your customers – Eg. a phone tree 8 layers deep is not conducive to keeping customers happy.
• I’d even settle for someone who can  smile and remain borderline pleasant at “hello”  (this applies to London England… the standard would be much, much higher in North America)

Isn’t it amazing how sometimes the most obvious is the last to be seen.

Yikes! I saw this sign en route to a meeting … not kidding… word for word! I wanted to pull over and blog about it immediately – it irritated me that much.

People… you can’t penalize the customers you are trying to retain in order to acquire new ones or even be perceived as doing so. Yes, you do need an Acquisition program that is aligned but different to your Retention program that is aligned but different to your Fanatic program (see earlier blog re Fanatics) – but what you must not do is ( or be perceived to be ) penalize Peter while trying to lure Paul to partake in the same bloody thing. Honestly! Gyms are notorious for this… so is the Brick… and apparently so are tanning salons.

How you acquire customers is somewhat different to how you retain customers which is somewhat different to how you create fanatics.

Acquisition or the art of acquiring customers involve a number of things:First you need a product or service that people want to pay for.Then it would be in your interest to identify who your customer is. Really get to know them… What age group are they in? Do they have children – how old? When are they likely to purchase your product or service? How do you leverage that moment? What are their needs? How can you meet those needs?

Position yourself as the expert, the leader in your category. (there will need to be a whole other posting on how to do this)

Give them something of value – and give it to them for free. This plays on the law of sewing and reaping. When you come to your customers as authentic, sincere and committed to being the best X, your customer will have a much harder time walking away from you to go to your greasy competitor who is there to make a quick buck. Why would you do this? Well, there are a lot of reasons. Your customers, that you now know really well, is looking for value. They are skeptical and jaded. They have time constraints. They want to do business with people they have something in common with. People they can trust. Well, you already identified their needs… you know what is important to them, you know what you can give them to meet one or more of their needs and you gave it to them without asking for business in return. Is this making sense?

Alright. You did it. You made the sale. Now what? This is just the beginning. Next steps – Retention! Why? It will cost you on average, 8x more to find a new customer than retain an existing one. What’s more, repeat business should be an objective for all of us. So how do you get it? Moments of Truth. Every time your customer engages with your business in ANY WAY, they are experiencing a moment of truth. Are you sure your company is delivering across all of those touch points? Phone, web, email, deliveries, return policies…. What is it about you, your product or service that is better than the next guy? I hope one of the things you say is that you know who your customer is. Knowing who your customer is tells you where to invest your research dollars, what products to develop, what services to offer with your products and when to reach out to your customer with a Seasons Greetings card.  Retaining your customer means this: continuously creating relevant and meaningful ways to ensure your customer’s loyalty. Note the use of the word continuous – your customer is evolving… Gen X soccer moms are being replaced with Gen Y soccer moms - a smart business mind follows the customer and your customer today, will likely have very different needs 3-5yrs from now.

Finally – Fanatics. You want them… you want lots of them. Why? Let’s first define a fanatic. A fanatic is a customer who is so smitten with you, your product or your business that they not only tell their world, but they insist that their world shop with you. They are recruiting customers for you. They are kind of like your sales force… and let’s face it, in our world, where word of mouth and word of mouse can do far far more to you in 30 seconds than a 7million dollar tv ad, you want to be damn sure, your word of mouth coverage is working for you.