CopyDiva

What do you do to retain customer loyalty? In today’s world, where there’s always a cheaper place to buy something, or a cheaper version of what you’re selling, it can be really difficult to create any connection with customers. But, as anyone in sales and marketing knows, its more efficient and costs less to keep customers than to find new ones. Building relationships with customers (ie, exceeding their expectations) is an important and often lost art in business.

How do you do that? Well, certainly there are differences in every business, but I think one of the best ways to do it is to exceed expectations in unexpected, memorable ways. Many of these involve encouraging your staff to take that extra step for the customer by empowering them to do things without endless manager approval.
Yesterday, I had a few experiences like this. I went skiing at my favorite mountain, Copper. It’s my favorite for a number of reasons, one of which is this kind of service. So, what do they do? Well, for one thing, they have free parking lots with endlessly running shuttles that take you — for free — to the mountain. They have 3 different shuttles that go to the 3 different mountain bases, so it takes all of 5-10 minutes from when you parked to getting on a chairlift. Which, considering how much lift tickets are, is really nice. At Vail, where ticket prices are outrageous, there’s no free parking, and you have to take an endless walk in your ski gear to get to the mountain. For a day skier, its a crappy way to start and end your day.
Yesterday on the shuttle at Copper, the driver offered discount coupons on rental gear for anyone who might need it. A nice little extra unexpected touch. Then, when I was leaving, the parking lot attendants were washing everyone’s windshields. Why, I asked? Just because. The dude who washed my windshield said the reason they liked working at Copper was because of what they called “The Bro Factor,” the laid back attitude of the company. The Bro Factor is, what seems to me, the authentic approach to customer relationships that Copper takes to develop loyalty from its local customers.
More Bro Factor: Christy’s, where I rent my son’s snowboard gear. He was supposed to go to the mountain with me, but being a teenager, got a better offer that involved hanging out with friends. So, he didn’t use his rental equipment. When I returned it to the store last night and told them he hadn’t used it, the staff person gave me a coupon for a free rental. The reason the equipment wasn’t used had nothing to do with Christy’s, but this staff person felt empowered to do something unexpected. Now Christy’s is just one of a dozen ski rental shops in town, but I go there because of their customer service and because they rent better equipment.

So what’s your Bro Factor?

Last night I bought a new pair of boots on Zappos.com. Big deal, right? Exactly. So, I am just almost through with the check out, and I get a pop-up window that asks the following questions:

• do I want to share what I purchased on Facebook? Or,
• do I want to share that “I bought something cool at zappos.com” on Facebook? Or
• no thanks

Why do I want to share what I bought on Facebook? The fact that I spent probably a little too much money on a pair of boots — a very nice pair of warm winter boots — why do I want to share that information? Maybe I am just not that kind of person. I mean, it isn’t like I called all my friends last night and told them about my purchase.

Maybe I am just not that interested in exposing that much to the ether. I really love shoes, but that doesn’t compel me to let other people know. Can someone please explain to mean this desire to express my purchases?

To be fair, I do expose my music stations that I listen to on Pandora, but I think that is different somehow. What I listen to is more of an expression of who I am than my winter boots. In fact, the whole idea of letting people know about what kind of boots I bought is boring me so much I will stop now.

Over at the Collective Intellect blog, I wrote a piece on targeting, and how social media engagement now means that marketers have a better way to target consumers. This piece was inspired in part by a presentation at the Colorado Business Marketing Association last Wednesday by Matt Preschern from IBM.

Monitoring social media to determine campaign direction works for both the B2B and B2C side, it just manifests differently in terms of the behavioral targeting and tactics:

B2B marketing: For B2B, targeting is more focused on finding out what the key influencers for a specific topic — such as virtualization, or PC security — are talking about in relation to the issues. what are the top themes they are discussing right now? Then you can base a lead generation campaign strategy directly on the issues that are of top concern to the influencers and the people who read them, and nurture those leads through a longer sales cycle by constantly understanding the top issues.
B2C marketing: For B2C, targeting is focused more on sub-groups within an area, such as new runners or skiers within the communities that discuss running and skiing. Or, scrapbookers who are tied in to the crafting communities. What are their issues? What kinds of themes are hot right now? How are the sub-groups interests and concerns different from the total group. In B2C, instead of building out white papers or webinars, you might offer coupons, training techniques or discounts to events.