I don’t like to spend money on cars, but with $4 per gallon of gas and my 12 year old Jeep acting up I decided to just move on and buy a smaller, more efficient vehicle.
A friend at work had recently bought a Scion xD, a cool little car loaded with features, a decent engine and great fuel economy. I liked it and decided that it would be my next car.
I started my new car search by emailing four local Scion dealers (let’s call them dealers A, B, C and D) to see if they had the color I wanted (and also to evaluate their responses as a marketing experiment). My email request was simple: I told them that I was looking for a silver, base xD and asked for two things: price and availability.
Following is a summary of the answers I received:
Dealer D
Didn’t answer.
Dealer C
They sent me three consecutive emails, none of which answered my question. Instead, I received these gems:
Email 1:
Hello Mario !
I have good news for you! Give me a call (xxx) xxx-xxxx or reply to this email. Please call me at your convenience. You’ll be glad you did!
Email 2:
Dear Mario,
We’d like to welcome you to our new Virtual Dealership!
Click the arrow to the right to view your special presentation.
Please feel free to reach me at any time. I look forward to
working with you.
Have a great day!
Email 3:
Hello Mario !
Thank you for your interest in the Toyota (sic) . Below is a brochure containing additional information. Please click below and it should open right up. If you have any trouble, please pick up the phone and call me john doe (not his real name) at (xxx) xxx-xxxx. Also, if you have any questions or concerns do not hesitate to contact me.
Three emails, no answer. Just spam and fluff.
Dealer B
These guys were close, but in the end fell short. Their first email came back quoting me an xD with $389 in options, when I had clearly stated that I wanted a base car. On top of that, they had added a $699 dealer fee.
I politely wrote back saying that I appreciated the response, but that I had requested a car w/o options, and that I would not pay any “dealer fees”.
They wrote back, two days later, with a new quote, this time without the options and the dealer fees. In the two days it took them to get back to me, though, I was already talking to dealer A and we were already far ahead into the process.
If dealer B would have answered my question from the start, or at least wouldn’t have taken two days to send me their second quote, they may have gotten the business. Instead, they blew it.
Dealer A
A sales woman immediately answered my email, giving me a price and letting me know that they had three cars in stock that fit my criteria.
I replied back asking her if that was the net price before tax, tag and title. She wrote back immediately, confirming that yes, it was, and that since this was an Internet transaction they would waive the dealer fee.
I then made an appointment to test drive the car. That day, she had all the paperwork ready and made the process a breeze. She even made arrangements to wash my wife’s car while we waited for my new car to be ready.
In Summary
Why did dealer A get my business?
- Because they answered my e-mail in the first place.
- Because they answered directly and promptly.
- Because there was a real person on the other side.
- Because they gave me the specific information I was looking for.
- Because they didn’t send me spam.
- Because they didn’t try to bamboozle me into having to call them.
- Because they didn’t try to pull the old bait and switch.
Seth Godin’s latest book has a lengthy section on the value of direct email communication with customers. This is pretty much what he says:
Every organization now has the ability (and probably the responsibility) to deal directly with the world. With customers, with prospects and with those impacted by their actions. No middlemen. This direct connection is an asset or a risk, depending on how you look at it.
Some companies regard email communication as a cost and therefore avoid it. Others consider it an excuse to send spam. Others, however, see it as an opportunity to build a business, as our little example shows.
Tags: Customer Service · Branding
What is LinkedIn?
LinkedIn is a social network of more than 20 million professionals from around the world, representing 150 industries.
When you join, you create a profile that summarizes your professional accomplishments, pretty much like an online resume, but with important social networking elements baked into it.
Here are some personal branding and marketing tips to get the most out of your LinkedIn profile:
Add a picture
You can add your picture and display it at the top of your profile. A picture helps create a personal connection and conveys the message that you take networking seriously.
You can use the same picture you use in other social networking sites, so that those who frequent them may identify you more easily (brand recognition).
Create a personalized URL
When you join LinkedIn, your profile will be assigned a random URL such as:
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/2/496/aa7
Not very marketable.
You have the option, however, to create a personalized URL such as:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/yourname/
If you want an even better URL, you can always register yourname.com for less than $10/year and forward it to your LinkedIn profile page for the ultimate in URL branding.
Promote your profile with LinkedIn buttons
Like other social networking sites, LinkedIn offers a wide array of icons and buttons that you can use to promote your LinkedIn profile on your site or blog.
You can chose among many different styles, and link them to your profile.
Create a LinkedIn email signature file
A LinkedIn email signature file displays your contact information including a link to your LinkedIn profile, in a variety of layout styles. The only caveat is that LinkedIn signatures are designed using HTML, and therefore will work with Outlook but not with Gmail or Hotmail.
If you don’t like any of the default styles, you can always use an HTML editor and create your own signature file, or create one directly in Outlook (you can use one of the LinkedIn buttons discussed before to make the link to your profile stand out).
If you use Gmail or other email provider that doesn’t accept HTML, you can always create a text-based signature file, and include a link to your LinkedIn profile by writing your URL preceded by http://.
Always include a Summary
LinkedIn lets you write a few paragraphs about yourself as part of your profile. You must take advantage of this since the Summary almost always gets read. This is your chance to include your elevator pitch or any other carefully crafted statement where you put your best foot forward.
Make your summary objective, but not boring. Avoid sounding self serving and corporate: if the summary of your qualifications sounds like it came out of an automatic mission statement generator delete everything and start again.
I suggest that you read the profile summaries of several members first, to help you decide how you would like your profile to read.
Participate in Questions & Answers
LinkedIn has a Q&A section where you can pose questions and answer other people’s inquiries. By actively using this feature you can share your expertise with other members and enhance your reputation in your field.
When answering questions, pretend you’re commenting on a blog or an online forum. The idea is to help others and add something meaningful to the conversation, not to openly advertise your products and services. If you are too aggressive you will turn people off. If you honestly try to help, people will naturally come to you.
Fill up the Specialties section carefully
Some LinkedIn users search for people by keyword. For example, if somebody does a LinkedIn search for “Online PR” and the term Online PR is listed among your specialties, your profile has a better chance to pop up for that query. Make sure to include all your areas of expertise in the Specialties field.
What other tips do you use to promote yourself in LinkedIn?
Tags: Social Media · Branding
Photo Credits: jared
If you are an independent professional who has embraced blogging for marketing, you’ve probably asked yourself these three questions:
- Should I write long or short posts?
- Should I write only original content or can I write about somebody else’s content?
- Should I post daily? Weekly? Monthly?
Long vs. Short Copy
While some pundits argue in favor of writing long articles, it really depends on what you’re trying to do. “How to” articles dealing with complex subjects will usually be longer. Bloggers like Skellie and Maki excel in this blogging style.
On the other hand, it is entirely possible to communicate powerful insights with only a few lines of text. Client K (one of my favorite business blogs) does exactly that every day.
Original vs. Derivative Content
With so much information already published on the web, writing something completely original is quite difficult. It is even more difficult to do so day in and day out.
If you are a guru that can write original content with half your brain tied behind your back, great. However, the rest of us can do just fine by analyzing a common problem from a different angle or re-purposing existing content for a specific target audience.
Also, there is nothing wrong with writing quick posts that link to other people’s content. If you see something that can be useful to your readers on another blog, by all means link to it. Don’t let the Not Invented Here syndrome dictate your blogging policy and stand in the way of your readers receiving valuable information.
Posting Frequency
Here I have to agree with the experts: it is better to post frequently. While posting daily can be tough (especially if you blog part time), posting weekly should be doable.
Consistency, though, is more important than frequency. Posting consistently every two weeks is better than publishing daily for three weeks and then disappearing for weeks or months.
However, don’t be so hung up into sticking to a publishing frequency that you start posting filler content. Avoid publishing something of inferior quality just because too much time has passed since your last post.
In Summary
Writing long or short posts depends on what you want to accomplish. If you find something interesting on another blog, by all means link to it. The best posting frequency is this: post when you have something important to say. If that occurs frequently (weekly or more often), even better.
Tags: Social Media · Blogging
Photo Credits: tedkerwin
You Can’t Ignore Search Engine Traffic
With all the hype around social media it is easy to overlook the potential of search engines to deliver targeted traffic. Search engines are probably the best source of targeted traffic and, as such, they should not be ignored.
While social media sites like Stumbleupon or Digg can be very effective in delivering strong bursts of traffic almost instantly, that traffic dwindles over time and generally doesn’t convert very well.
Search engine traffic, on the other hand, has a longer term effect. Also, since search engine users are specifically looking for what you have to offer, search engine traffic has a better conversion rate.
Search Engine Traffic: Shoestring Branding’s Case
Six months ago, when we launched this site, we relied heavily on social media traffic. Stumbleupon was especially good to us, generating more than 70% of the traffic during our first two months. Search engines represented only 5%.
Today, six months later, our site has accumulated visibility and trust. Stumbleupon has decreased in relative importance, while search engine traffic has grown. In the last two months, search engines were responsible for 40% of our traffic (versus just 17% for Stumbleupon).
At the same time, we have seen our subscriber numbers grow, giving weght to the theory that search engine traffic converts better.
The Old Days of SEO
Since the early days, search engine quality engineers have offered this simple suggestion: if you want to rank well, just create a useful site with lots of great content. However, manipulating search engine rankings was so easy that webmasters usually chose to focus more on learning the latest SEO tricks than trying to grow organically.
These are some of the things you could do in the past:
- Increase keyword density by repeating your keywords of choice in your page copy.
- Use the same keywords in the link text of every link pointing to your site.
- Get a keyword rich domain, like “keyword1-keyword2-keyword3.com”.
- Exchange links with other people (chances are you’re still receiving spammy email from clueless webmasters offering you to exchange links to “increase Pagerank”).
- Spam blogs by leaving meaningless comments as an excuse to include a link back to your site.
Most of these tricks don’t work any more, and are nothing but a waste of time .
Mechanical SEO Is Out. Sustainable SEO Is In
Search engines have been busy lately working to close all these loopholes. Search engines can now identify and penalize pages that use keywords excessively or develop too many links too fast. Blog comment spam has been out since blog platforms started supporting the no-follow tag.
SEO is not about using tricks any more. Instead, SEO should focus on getting your site firmly enmeshed in the community: SEO is now a social activity .
The time has finally come to follow the search engines’ original advice and build a great site that others will want to link to. It’s time to engage in sustainable SEO.
Sustainable SEO: Getting Back to Basics
No matter how you slice it or dice it, there are only two things you need to do to build a successful site:
1. Create and publish great content, and
2. Tell the right people about it.
Assuming that you know how to create great content (after all, you’re interested and passionate about your topic, right?) telling the right people about it should be your next priority.
Getting people to know you and link to you are the basis for sustainable SEO, since search engines use links from established, reputable sites as a proxy for value and trust.
The Number One Tip to Get Links
The best advice I can give you is this: link out liberally. If there are bloggers in your field that you admire and want to get their attention, link to their posts from your site. Use their posts to provide support and context to your posts.
Don’t be afraid to “send your readers to the competition” or “leaking Pagerank”. That is foolish and outdated thinking .
By linking out often, people will start to notice you. Some of them will read your blog, others will become subscribers, and a few of them will become your friends, link to your posts, and support you all the way through. These connections will become your most valuable asset.
Training the Search Engines
Aside from writing good content and reaching out to fellow bloggers, you must train the search engines to know what your site is about. This will help you rank for different queries related to your topic. Some of the things you can do to guide the search engines are:
- Post regularly.
- Link to very good sites related to your subject matter.
- Make your blog posts focused: talk about only one specific subject per post.
- Have a limited (10 or so) group of focused, related categories with descriptive names.
- Include keywords in your page or post titles.
- Link to past posts on your own blog using descriptive anchor text.
- Create a sitemap and link to it from your sidebar.
Grab a Chair: Search Engine Visibility Takes Time
Search engine visibility doesn’t happen overnight. There is evidence that search engines like Google place new sites on a “probation” period before giving them weight in their rankings (in the case of Google, this probation period is known as the Google Sandbox).
During that time, it pays to be patient and to focus on building your site’s content. After a while (usually a few months) search engines will learn to trust your site and your posts will start showing up in the SERPs for a variety of search queries.
Other SEO Resources:
Tags: Blogging · SEO
Darren Rowse, publisher of the wildly successful Problogger blog, has recently written a book . Problogger is all about making money online, has 45,000+ subscribers and features more than 4,000 posts. Probably most of the content in the book can be found by reading and digging deep into the blog (a real treasure trove of information). So, if you can read Darren’s blog, why buy the book?
The answer is simple: in the information age value can be created by simply aggregating and compiling information. We don’t have time to hunt for information. We want it fast and in a format that’s easy to consume: why browse through 4,000 posts when we can get a selected, condensed, organized and neatly packaged version of that content? That is why Darren will sell a ton of books.
Have you thought of all the possible components of your value curve? Are you addressing all the ways in which your customers may want to consume your product or service? Are you packaging your expertise in a way that’s easy to communicate and spread?
Tags: Blogging · Branding
Photo Credits: Stephen Witherden
Last Monday I traveled overseas and, while at the airport in Miami, I observed the behavior of two people working there. One was a food stand attendant and the other one a security agent for the TSA (Transportation Security Administration).
The food stand attendant was taking a personal phone call while serving customers, holding the phone with one hand and reaching for the customers’ money with the other. In the meantime, the line kept getting bigger and customers were getting impatient. There were breadcrumbs and dirty napkins lying on the floor around her, the shelves were missing product and the whole place looked untidy and neglected.
When there were no more people on the line I decided to buy a bag of chips, but before I could hand her my money she just walked away, leaving the stand completely unattended for around three minutes. During that time, customers who wanted to pay left their food and walked away.
The TSA agent was completely different. This guy was walking through the crowd lined up before the security checkpoint, acting like a rock star, greeting everybody and making jokes: “How you doin’ today sir? OK? Good! And how about you ma’am? Good? I’m glad… Happy passengers, that’s what I want…. New York Jets? New York Jets? You gotta lose that cap, buddy!….How are you, sir?….. OK folks, if the guy in front of you is not moving, kick him! …..How you doin’ sir?” He would then pause for a few minutes and repeat the performance with another group of newly arrived passengers. He even had some cool jazz music playing close bye.
Going through airport security ranks high as one of life’s most dreaded experiences (up there with getting a root canal or watching politicians apologize in public for their character flaws). However, this guy alone, with his positive attitude and personal touch made the whole experience different and almost enjoyable.
I don’t think it’s a matter of money. The difference in salary between these two people can’t be more than a few bucks an hour, however, one cared and the other one didn’t. It’s a matter of character and pride.
This episode made me think about Jim Collins’ remarks in his classic book Good to Great , when he talks about the need to “get the right people on the bus” first. What he means by that is that people are more important than org. charts and job descriptions, and that you should make sure that you hire the right people before you do anything else.
He is right, and under that perspective the TSA guy would get hired over the food stand attendant any time.
Tags: Productivity · Customer Service
Photo Credits: yananine
You can see it everywhere these days: from the entry level car with the performance engine, premium sound system and power everything, to the neighborhood restaurant serving food fit for an upscale bistro, to the local grocer projecting itself as a destination for wine connoisseurs.
The path that Target beat years ago by offering quality and style at affordable prices is now being followed by all those who want to resonate with today’s demanding consumer.
Meeting expectations or doing things a little bit better is no longer enough to build a business.
Harry Beckwith says in his classic book “Selling the Invisible” that in order to stand out from the masses you must take a leap and surprise the customer. You must do what the successful companies we just mentioned have done: shatter expectations and create a new standard.
As small business owners in a competitive environment, we should be thinking regularly: how can we deliver amazing service? How can we “Targetize” our business to give it that premium feel at no extra cost to become our customer’s only choice?
One simple way to come up with ideas is to analyze your customer’s pain points and ask yourself what significant problem can you solve. For example, these are some angles you can explore:
- Reduce wait time: In today’s time-starved society, anything you can do to deliver your product or service faster will bring you business. For example, try answering the phone by the second ring, having more inventory, or making your service scalable by mapping out processes and making them easy to follow.
- Give your business a human face: People hate to listen to recordings and automated menu options. Make sure that your customers can interact with a knowledgeable human being.
- Follow up: People are tired of companies that bend over backwards to make a sale, only to forget about you once you have signed on the dotted line. Call your customers after the sale to see if everything’s OK. One caveat, though: don’t use this as an excuse to up sell them on something else, or it will backfire.
- Communicate honestly: We’ve learned to be cynical about top-down sales pitches and other self serving ways in which most large companies communicate. As small business owners and independent professionals we have the chance to establish a very different kind of relationship. Encourage openness, have a blog and acknowledge your readers’ comments, answer your own email, welcome feedback and let your customers feel part of your business. Honesty and openness go a long way.
- Be consistent: small businesses have a lot to learn from successful franchises. The reason why these businesses thrive is because they have mastered their processes in a way that they can be duplicated anywhere. Giving good service shouldn’t be an isolated occurrence. Make sure that you can perform at the same level every time a customer interacts with you.
- Make things easy: These days people have many options. Nobody will jump through hoops to do business with you. Is it easy to do business with you? Amazon’s sales increased dramatically after they launched their One Click payment option. Staples built a business around their Easy Button theme. As Mark Cuban, the outspoken owner of the Dallas Mavericks, says: “Make your product easier to buy than your competition, or you will find your customers buying from them, not you.”
Tags: Customer Service · Branding
In this age of information overload and short attention spans, the ability to deliver clear and concise presentations is one of the most important skills.
Instead, business presentations today are mostly long, unfocused and boring. In a typical PowerPoint presentation, the audience is forced to sit through slide after slide of charts, bullet points and text while the presenter reads from the screen.
As a result, both presenter and audience feel stressed and disengaged, and everybody ends up wasting their time (this common situation is also referred to as Death by PowerPoint).
Garr Reynolds’ quest to end PowerPoint as we know it started years ago when, riding on the express train from Tokyo to Osaka, he had his epiphany: after watching a Japanese businessman nervously flip through a printout of poorly designed PowerPoint slides in an obvious state of confusion, he decided to launch his Presentation Zen blog, now the most popular presentation design site on the web.
Presentation Zen
(the book) is organized in three main sections:
- Preparation
- Design
- Delivery
In the way of the true classics, this book is more than a simple step by step tutorial. It outlines an approach, a strategy to solve the complex communication issues of today. It not only tells us how to do a presentation, but instead takes us on a journey to discover what is it that we need to communicate in the first place, and how to make it resonate with our audience.
Here are some of the things I learned:
- How to discover your core message (the one thing, and only one, that you want your audience to remember).
- The importance of having quiet time to think. Busyness kills creativity. We all need some quiet time alone to come up with our best ideas.
- To use pencil and paper to brainstorm the content and outline of a presentation.
- To use two often forgotten PowerPoint tools: notes (so you don’t have to read from the screen) and handouts (so you don’t have to cram all the data on your slides).
- Less is more: remove from slides every single element that doesn’t add to our core message.
- PowerPoint is not a document creation tool. It’s job is to provide a visual aid to our presentation. The slides themselves are not the presentation.
- Images are more powerful than words.
Garr has packed this book with visual examples of great (and not so great) presentations, so we can see the difference. Also, he summarizes the most important ideas at the end of each chapter, and links to great presentation resources on the web (my favorite is TED, where you can see the great presenters of our time in action).
This book is not for everyone. Those readers who are looking for a few quick tips on how to do a PowerPoint presentation may get impatient with the author’s frequent and lengthy references to the Zen philosophy and concepts.
However, if you bear with him, you will learn more than just do a presentation. You will learn to analyze and solve complex communications problems, to see the big picture from your customers’ perspective, and how to effectively position products and services in the marketplace.
If you have to do presentations for a living (and who doesn’t these days?) read this book and keep it handy for future reference. And, while you’re at it, add Presentation Zen (the blog) to your blogroll or favorites.
Tags: Presentations · Book Reviews · Branding
Photo Credits: spcummings
As social media grow in popularity, more small business owners are getting interested in blogging. Once they decide to have a blog the next question is: what tools to use, and how much do they cost?
The cost of operating a blog is virtually negligible. Around $100/year will buy you access to a self publishing platform with all the tools to instantly reach people all over the world. From a cost-benefit perspective, blogging is really a no-brainer.
Here’s a breakdown of the tools I’m using and how much they cost:
Domain Name ($9/year):
I used Godaddy (aff) to register shoestringbranding.com and all my other domains. Godaddy has excellent prices and a user-friendly interface. Make sure you check these tips on how to chose the best domain name before you proceed.
Logo ($25):
With pencil and paper at hand, I quickly drafted a manual version of how I wanted my logo to look, and sent it to Gotlogos to clean up and convert into a small jpg file. Since I’m not a graphic artist my logo is very simple, but it gets the job done and it’s even been nominated for awards.
I’m not recommending that you skimp on your logo. In fact, a good logo is probably the best investment you can make. In any case, a professionally designed logo will rarely cost you more than a few hundred dollars (Guy Kawasaki reports that he spent just $399 for the logo of Truemors).
Hosting Package ($7.95/month):
I set up ShoestringBranding as an add on domain in a hosting account that I already had, so technically my incremental hosting costs were $0. My existing account is a basic hosting package with Midphase for which I pay $7.95/month.
A basic package will give you more space and bandwidth that you’re going to need in a long time (you can always upgrade later if your blog hits the big time).
Blogging Software (Free):
I use Wordpress for its features, its ease of customization, and because it has been endorsed by Google engineers as a search-engine-friendly blogging platform. It is also free, and usually comes included in most hosting packages.
Activating Wordpress is very easy (your hosting company can give you instructions), or you can read this tutorial.
Note: don’t confuse Wordpress.org (an open source free blogging software that you can customize and is available with most hosting packages) with Wordpress.com (a free hosted blogging platform with very limited customization options). Learn more about the differences between wordpress.org and wordpress.com .
Blog Theme (Free):
There are hundreds of themes that have been developed especially for Wordpress, and that you can freely use. I went to the Wordpress Theme Site and picked the two-column Cutline theme, by Chris Pearson .
I chose this theme because I wanted a mostly white, minimalist template that was easy to manipulate and customize (it is easier to customize a white, minimalist template than a theme that uses more colors and textures).
Also, I chose the two-column over the three-column layout. Some people prefer three columns (two sidebars) because it gives them more space to put ads and widgets. I, however, prefer the two column layout (one sidebar) because it offers less distractions and helps readers focus on the content (sometimes more is not necessarily better).
I then customized the theme’s style sheets to achieve the look and feel I wanted. All I really did was to change the font type, modify the header, and change the link colors.
Since I know some HTML, I was able to do the changes myself. However, if you are not that technically inclined, you can always get some affordable help in Craigslist to make the changes for you.
RSS Feed Service (Free):
I use Feedburner, an RSS tool that lets you distribute your content through many different feed readers. Feedburner also gives you the option to put a form on your blog to allow your visitors to subscribe by email.
With Feedburner you can also keep track of your subscriber numbers and learn some basic statistics about your visitors.
Bookmarking Buttons (Free):
It is recommended to put social bookmarking icons at the end of your entries so that your readers can easily bookmark your posts. I chose three bookmarking services: Del.icio.us, Digg and Stumbleupon and placed links to each of them at the end of my posts.
You can also use the comprehensive bookmarking icon offered by Addthis.com. It looks very good and lets you bookmark your post in almost every bookmarking site available.
Stats Package (Free):
I use Google Analytics, a great free tool from Google that tells you how many visitors are coming to your site, where are they coming from, what keywords are they using to find your pages in the search engines, etc.
Google Analytics is very easy to install and is a must if you want to understand your blog’s traffic patterns. (I installed the Google Analytics code in the footer.php page).
Search Engine (Free)
I use Google Custom Search to give my visitors the option to search my site (see search box at the top of the sidebar, to your right).
After you sign up, you’ll be given two snippets of HTML: one of them to place where you want your search box to be, and the other one to put in the page where you want the search results to appear (this excellent Google Custom Search tutorial will show you how to do it).
If you have a Google Adsense account you can tie it to your Google Custom Search account and Google will pay you every time somebody clicks on the sponsored links in your search results page.
Images (Free):
Photographs and images significantly increase the credibility of your blog, enhancing your posts and making them easier to read. I use Flickr images for all my posts. Here’s how to find Flickr pictures that you can use legally on your blog .
There is also a good royalty-free image site called istockphoto.com where you can buy the rights to use a picture on your blog for as low as $1.00.
That’s all there is to it. In summary, I have just spent $25 for a logo and $9/year for a domain name. In addition to this, you will need around $95.40/year for a basic package. Any way you look at it, publishing a blog is a bargain.
Aside from the cost of the tools you need to get your blog up and running, your biggest expense will be the time you invest in researching and writing posts . However, if you are like me, you will heavily discount the value of that time because you’ll be doing something you enjoy.
What other tools are you using? What advice can you give bloggers that are just starting out? We would love to hear your tips and suggestions.
Tags: Social Media · Blogging
Photo Credits: garybembridge
The true character of organizations is often revealed by how well do they respond to customer feedback. Doing the right thing for the customer has always been good business sense, but never more important than today, when blogs and social media have given consumers the power to share their experiences with millions of people.
The blogosphere is full of stories about bad customer service, but today I will share with you an example of customer service done right:
Last month I traveled to Dubai and stayed at Le Meridien hotel. Overall, my stay was pleasant and uneventful, but somehow I couldn’t get over the high cost of the daily Internet connection charge (US$20). For somebody like me who can’t fathom spending a day without being connected to the web, having to pay for Internet access is like having to pay for air to breath.
Upon my return to the States, the hotel sent me an email survey, asking me to rate the different aspects of my visit. I gave the hotel a good review, however I expressed my discomfort with the Internet charge telling them that, in my opinion, a hotel that caters to business travelers should recognize that Internet access is not a luxury but a necessity, and therefore should be offered at no extra charge.
A couple of days later, I received this email from the hotel’s Quality Director:
Dear Mr. Sanchez,
We would like to thank you for filling out the Guest Questionnaire sent on behalf of our parent company, Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide.
We were indeed delighted to note that you have enjoyed all the services and facilities, which you have experienced throughout your stay and are grateful for the positive comments you have expressed in your customer evaluation, especially concerning our reception staff.
Concerning your comments with regards to our internet charges, we have credited your American Express Card no. XXXXXXXXXXXXXX the amount of AED 140 for the two usage of internet on February 11 & 15.
We would certainly look forward to the pleasure of welcoming you back to Le Méridien Dubai in the not too distant future. In the meantime, if you require any further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact us either via my email address (email address here) or direct fax (fax no. here) and we would be more than happy to be at your service.
Yours sincerely,
Name Here
Quality Director
Now, THAT is a good response. And it is good, in my opinion, for several reasons:
- The survey was taken seriously and not just as a routine task or, as many companies do, as easy and free marketing research.
- It shows that the company values long term relationship with customers more than the short term profit that can be extracted by nickel and diming them.
- The response is an actual email message from an actual human being, and not an automated, prefabricated response.
- Instead of offering a token concession, like a free drink or a small discount on my next visit, they directly addressed my concern by eliminating the Internet access charges altogether.
Think about these four takeaways and how you can adapt them and apply them in your small business.
Attention and trust are the most valuable commodities of the new economy. Every time a customer gives you attention (by buying a product, filling a survey, etc.) you have the opportunity to respond to it in a way that generates loyalty and trust. And trust, more than product features or price, is what ultimately will separate the great companies from all the rest.
Tags: Customer Service
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