In most industries, competition is more intense than it’s ever been. Likewise, customer loyalty is lower than ever. This combination of intense competition and a suppressed tendency to remain brand-loyal creates an interesting dynamic for businesses.
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How to Thrill Your Customers
Customers are emotional beings. To assume otherwise is a major mistake with costly ramifications for your brand and your bottom line. If you want to ignite your customers and move them to action on a regular basis, you can’t just steadily walk the line. You need to give your customers a thrill.
Research shows that it’s far more costly to acquire a new customer than retain an existing one. And while we’re all for going out and procuring new customers, it’s your existing customers who are going to move the revenue “dial” more than anything else.
Here are a few ways you can thrill them (so that you can keep them):
1. Empower Employees
It’s hard for “tall” organizations to thrill customers. If you’re serious about doing this, you need to flatten your organizational hierarchy. At the very least, you have to find ways to empower employees to make real-time decisions that benefit your customers.
There are plenty of ways to empower employees, but many businesses have found success in giving them autonomy (with limits). Rather than having employees go up the chain of command to solve a small problem (which takes time and further frustrates the customer), competitive businesses let their employees make their own decisions up to $50. For example, if there’s an issue with an order, an employee can send a replacement product with next-day shipping without having to clear it with a superior (as long as it costs less than $50).
2. Collect and Act on Feedback
Another practical way to empower your employees is to provide them with context on who customers are, what their biggest pain points are, what they’re looking for in a solution, etc. Because when employees understand customers, it allows them to be more empathetic in how they communicate and address issues.
Not sure where to start with collecting feedback? Simple email surveys are a great place to begin. If you have an existing email list, consider sending out a quarterly survey with a simple incentive for people to answer. The survey doesn’t have to be anything in-depth or detailed. Just a question or two is often enough to get a pulse on what’s happening.
3. Set the Right Expectations
One of the biggest mistakes businesses make is over-promising. They make bold claims and then rarely live up to them. As a result, customers fail to trust the brand and quickly become dissatisfied. This can be corrected in a number of ways, but at a fundamental level, it starts with setting the right expectations.
As a general rule of thumb, you can elevate your brand’s place in a customer’s mind by under-promising and over-delivering. In essence, you set expectations that you can meet 100 percent of the time. But more than that, you set expectations that you’re consistently going to exceed.
If you know that you have the infrastructure in place to deliver something to customers the very next day after ordering, you can implement a two-day shipping guarantee. Not only does this guarantee that you’re going to meet your promise (even if there’s an issue), but it sets you up to over-deliver. In most cases, customers are going to be pleasantly surprised when their order shows up the very next day. It’s a built-in bonus that people remember.
4. Reinvent the Wheel
You’ll often hear entrepreneurs tell you that you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. And while they’re often right in saying this, there are times when it pays to reinvent your industry’s normal way of doing things.
For example, there’s a barbershop that sells cufflinks, pocket squares, and tie clips instead of the usual shampoos and conditioners at the checkout counter. This is unusual, but it works. Customers start to see the barbershop as an experience (not just a place to get a haircut).
Set Your Business Apart
Most businesses are selfish. They see customers as pawns for generating revenue and puffing up their numbers to impress investors and board members. But in reality, customers are the business. And if you’re looking for sustainable growth – not short-term injections of revenue – you have to put them first.
By thrilling your customer at every step of the funnel, you’ll ultimately grow your business and thrive.
