Category: Blog

This is the best book I have read on customer service.

One of the things I stress with my client is the importance of customer service in their organization. I have repeatedly blogged about it, here and here. Great customer service allows you to increase the lifetime value of a customer to your organization. So when I was in Texas and had a great customer service experience, I found that the founder of that organization had written a book. Customers for Life by Carl Sewell is a great book about customer service and how to use it to build a business.

This book cuts out all of the fluff and gets right to the message. Short chapters with pithy points and checklists to help you implement it make this a quick and informative read.

A few of the points worth nothing:

1. Ten Commandments of Customer Service: Lists make things easier to remember. With items like: Systems not smiles, and Fire your inspectors and consumer relations department, Carl turns typical thoughts about customer service on their head. The idea that people want a smile and that makes everything better is false. People want a good product(with a smiling face, but that is a secondary desire). Build systems to improve their customer experience and then incentivise and empower all of your employees to take care of the customers.
2. Treat your employees better than the customers. Sewell makes several points about treating your employees well. This is something lost of many companies, but happy employees will treat customers better. It also allows you to attract top talent. Top talent pays off in a variety of ways from retention, to innovation, and of course, sales!
3. Amazing Customer service is the right thing to do, but it is also profitable. Carl Sewell points out that the ultimate motivation about working this hard for the customers is that it grows the business. No one would go out to unlock a car for free in the middle of the night for free, but if you take care of your customers well, they will buy from you again. The bigger picture of each great customer interaction is a growth in business.

I am also a fan of Dave Ramsey who advocates for incentivising employees. Carl Sewell advocates for that as well. Each employee is measured on different performance areas and are incentivized to do well. This puts your money where your mouth is!

This book is now up there with Entreleadership in my, most important books to read for business, category. You can get Customers for Life by Carl Sewell on Amazon. 

I have another Free Marketing Idea for you! And if your businesses are not in these areas, maybe it will spark some ideas for your next marketing partnership. This idea came up recently while speaking with a friend who works at a flower shop.

Gender reveal parties or announcements have almost become as big as the baby announcement itself. There are lots of videos on youtube about gender reveal parties and funny reactions to kids who are disappointed with their new siblings gender. As this trend grows, I think it provides an opportunity for some local businesses across the country.

My friend who worked at the flower shop was telling us about preparing some balloons for a gender reveal party. This along with cakes, or confetti, or other surprise tools to tell the world what your baby’s gender will be are suppose to help create suspense and allow for a surprise when revealed.

My current understanding of the process is that once the gender is determined by the doctor, it is written on a slip of paper and handed over to the lucky couple to plan. That couple hands it over to a relative or close friend who then has the surprise ruined and is responsible for keeping the secret and planning the party.

Well humans are prone to error. What if the couple slips up and looks (or not by accident decides to look becuase they can’t contain themselves) or the relative/friend missteps with their words and reveals it accidently?

How can a service be provided to ensure the surprise and make the party wonderful? Enter in the bakery or the flower or gift shop. Instead of handing over the sensitive information to the family, they could send it to a local shop they have a relationship with. Then the family could purchase specific services from that shop and then the surprise is a surprise to everyone at the party!

This benefits the clinic by helping make a special event even more special for a family. This could lead to more business. The shop gets a referral and is able to make a few extra sales and could develop a reputation for making the best gender reveal surprises in town. Sounds like a win-win marketing partnership to me!

One of the most valuable forms or marketing is partnerships with other businesses. Mutually beneficial partnerships can lead to lots of leads and new business for almost no cost. We see this in different industries.

Sometimes bodyshops establish informal relationships with insurance agencies. The benefit for the bodyshop is clear, they receive referrals after people have wrecks. The benefit for the insurance agency is a little less clear becuase it would not be a referral check, that could look unseemly or unethical. The insurance agency’s primary benefit would be knowing that their customers would be well taken care of, which is very valuable to the insurance agent. Additionally there could be some stationary or snacks that the body shop brings by.

For a successful marketing partnership, formal or informal, there are a few prerequisites:

1. A Relationship- Relationships are important in business. Maybe not as important as they use to be, but they are still important. Forming a relationship with businesses that you could work with is a critical step in the business to business world. People will not do a marketing partnership with people they do not know. They may do business with people they don’t know but to refer someone they are putting their reputation on the line with yours. To do this most people must have a personal relationship.
2. Mutual Benefit- For a marketing partnership to work, there must be a mutual benefit. Maybe that is a cash transaction, maybe that is cookies brought by, peace of mind for their customers, or  free press. When approaching someone about a partnership make sure that you clearly layout these benefits. You are selling the person on the deal because ultimately this is business.
3. Consistent Quality Work- As mentioned above, one business is putting their reputation on the line with yours when they refer someone to you. If you do not produce quality results then you are endangering your partnership and the benefit to your business. Before you approach someone about a partnership, make sure that you are performing your service well and so are they. This will help headaches in the long run.
4. Similar Customer Type- The type of customer that someone attracts is important to the success of a business partnership. If you are a low end restaurant partnering with a 5 star hotel, that might not workout so well. If you are a old established law firm, partnering with a local radio station targeting younger demographics might not be the best partnership. This may sound like a subsection under the mutual benefit category but it is different. You may still make money off the transactions from a partnership with different customer types but they might not be the kind of client you are able to retain for the long term or make as high of a profit margin off of. Additionally they might be the kind of client who expects too much from their businesses and your business might not be able to meet these needy clients where they are.

I hope this article helps you think of some creative marketing partnerships to help grow your business to the next level! If you want help coming up with some, send me an email and we can work on that!

Traveling through Texas last week, I noticed my Subaru starting making an unfamiliar noise. This is usually not a good thing for an older car (the Buru is a 2002 model) and eventually it got obtrusive enough for us to seek assistance. We found a Subaru dealer not far from us in Dallas and we drove gingerly over to Sewell Subaru.

Though it was late on a Saturday the staff was willing to give us a quick diagnosis. Even though the store closed in hour, no one had checked out mentally yet.

Two customer service wins:

1. “Siri call Uber”: Renae and I sat in the lobby awaiting the news about the Subaru’s condition and across the room from us sat an elderly woman with her iPhone. She was using Siri to try and call an Uber. We found this slightly humorous and she continued to try even though Siri said it did not understand. A saleswoman for the dealership walked by and proceeded to slowly explain what Uber was and how it work, even helping the woman install the app and request an Uber. She did this without a second thought.
2. Free check up: The staff was really kind to us as they looked at the Subaru. The took the car to the back and removed the tire and found that the caliper was not working properly. The gave it as big of a bandaid as possible and allowed us to limp back to Tennessee. They did so without a charge and wished us well.

These two stories showed me very quickly that customer service was super important to Sewell Subaru. If we lived in Dallas we would be doing business with them without a second thought. While doing some more research for this blog, I found that the owner of this a few other dealerships has written a book a customer service. I have ordered it and will put up a review after reading it!

Remember: Every customer interaction is a chance to make a stark raving fan!

Sidenote: After posting this picture on Instagram, Subaru asked to use it in future marketing material. So that is pretty cool.

Mission Statements are not something people usually think about. Traditionally mission statements are long complex paragraphs that you read during orientation at a new organization and forget about that afternoon (assuming your orientation was in the morning). This isn’t always the case but it has been in most places I have been apart of. That is, if your business/organization has a mission statement. I have worked with lots of clients for whom a mission statement has not even crossed their minds. I would propose that mission statements are super important for the organization and can become a really solid part of any marketing strategy.

Why are mission statements so important in marketing?

1.  Mission Statements ground the organization. A good mission statement helps you from chasing whatever might pop up along your path. Imagine you are an Italian restaurant but you just got a great offer to sell fajitas from our distributor. Fantastic price with a great margin. Do you think that could confuse your customers? A good mission statement will help you from diluting your brand by adding products and services that don’t fit. Imagine if a marketing company decided to start doing tree trimming. Would that affect your perception of that marketing company?

2. A well written mission statement is memorable. If you have written a mission statement well, you will be able to use it all the time. It will work its way into your speech and into your marketing. But it needs to be short and memorable. Anything more than a sentence is too much. Being memorable helps your employees focus on the work at hands and reminds them why they are there in the first place.

3. It captures the organization in a few words which helps convey it to strangers. Andy Stanley recently said at Leadercast that “people follow clarity”. If you are able to demonstrate to a client or a donor the clarity that you bring to the table, they will be more inclined to do business with you. A good mission statement becomes apart of your elevator pitch and helps all of your team members share the same info about the organization helping you create a more solid brand.

Examples of mission statements:

Three mission statements I have had a heavy hand in helping write and that I think follow the model above:

1. The Star Center. The Star Center’s mission is to help any person with any disability to realize their potential.

2. Our Jackson Home: The mission of Our Jackson Home is to tell the stories of the people and the city that we all love.

3. Adelsberger Marketing: The mission of Adelsberger Marketing is to help businesses communicate with their current and potential customers.

Like a logo and a website, I think mission statements are bedrocks of any good marketing plan. Let’s lead our employees and customers with clarity!

A message I start meetings with most potential clients is: “I can’t help you if you don’t have a good product.” Marketing cannot help a stone roll up hill but can help a stone roll downhill twice as fast.

You should not hire a marketing person if you product and service is terrible. Because it will be a negative return on investment. There maybe some short term gains but it will be causing medium and long term losses. Why is that? Because people talk. Word of mouth can be the best and worst form of advertising.

Word of mouth happens when you have a good product and good service. People like it so they tell others. That endorsement from a friend or family member carries more weight than most any medium of advertising has ever carried. But the exact opposite is true as well.

If someone has a bad experience they will tell their family or friends. Those family and friends are probably going to trust that person’s experience.

If customers are having a bad experience and you add some marketing into the mix, more people will come. More people coming and having a bad experience means more people talking bad about your business. This will end up you costing more than it makes you and it could be enough to close a business.

But if you have a bad product and you know it, you have an opportunity to start fixing it before it is too late. Knowing is half the battle. The other half is caring enough to do something about it. Don’t miss an opportunity to make a stark raving fan!