I’ve recently learned that moving digital property is almost as emotional as moving physical property.

Over the last few days, I’ve been moving my web sites to a new server and this has been more of an emotional process than I had anticipated.   In some ways, leaving one web host was like breaking up and moving out. It included all the feigned politeness that was required.  And then moving to the new web host had all the hopeful emotion attached to any new relationship.

What do relationships have to do with servers?

I didn’t think relationships had anything at all to do with servers.  What’s the big deal?  You click a few buttons, identify a new server to point to, then sit back, cross your fingers and hope for the best.  But what happens when it doesn’t go perfectly?  Can a kind word and attitude really keep customers loyal?

I’m not sure if a kind word can overcome poor quality product or performance, but a kind word can certainly earn you the benefit of the doubt.  And depending on the promise of your brand, it  can make all the difference.

HostGator‘s Customer Service Boosts Their Brand

A lot of business bloggers have been recommending HostGator to host their blogs.  I don’t recall the actual reasons and I don’t even know what HostGator’s official positioning is.  But based on my experience in searching for a new web host, visiting sites and getting recommendations from people who are just like me — I got this impression that HostGator was going to be a good choice for me.  It seemed to me that they were targeting people who had enough technical know-how to host their own blog or web site — but that’s sort of where it ended.  (Yup – sounds like me).

Their site spoke my language – they used standard terms that I understood and they didn’t give brand names to things that obscured what they were.  Hey — just being able to say that I needed a “dedicated IP address” was enough new language for me.

They had FRIENDLY and helpful online chat people no matter how many times I needed their help.  They didn’t even get snippy when I contacted them two or three times within a fifteen minute period (and got the same guy!)  to ask the same question.  In fact, their customer service has been everything that I need; patient with my lack of technical knowledge and information, informative, responsive and generally helpful.

But what happens when something goes wrong?

Well, something is going wrong.  Something is up with a couple of my sites and I’m not getting email on my main email account.  Yup.  This is a problem.  And it’s making me nervous.  But HostGator’s customer service training, policy or whatever it is that they are doing over there is keeping my anxiety at bay.  When I contacted them this morning — they rep’s response was “I see that our admins are actually working on this right now.”  Maybe they were and maybe they weren’t but his next sentence was along the lines of “We’ll handle it from here.”  And I went on about my day.

How to Create a Brand Building Customer Service Strategy

1. Build it around your ideal customer. Focus your customer service on your target ideal customer — not everyone.  The whole point of competition is that there is a choice for every type of customer.  Pick the one you serve best.
2. Ask yourself – what’s important to my target customer when they are dealing with what I’m selling. If your ideal customer is a technical dolt who sees themselves capable of managing several blogs without understanding how the technology works, then the customer conversation is COMPLETELY different from the IT professional or company who is in the web site management business.  Identify the circumstances and events that your ideal customers will most likely find themselves in and then create a service conversation around those in a language they can understand.
3. Be who your customer expects you to be. It’s amazing how much simpler customer service training is when you simply focus on BEING who your customer expects you to be based on the brand you’ve put out there.  In my HostGator experience, I expected to be walked through the process and to have certain things explained because I’m not a technical person.  So if your brand were a person — who would they be?  Would they be helpful, patient, super technical?  Once you choose that – having a customer service conversation from that point of view should be easy.

So can great customer service overcome technical difficulty — absolutely.  It can certainly buy you time, patience and loyalty.  If you focus on BEING your brand as you practice your customer service, you’ll find happier customers, happier employees and a bigger bottom line.

Every business loses customers.  We all like to think we won’t; we all like to think our businesses are amazing enough – and provide enough value – that we won’t lose any customers.

But the reality is – EVERY business does.

Sometimes it’s our fault – maybe one of our processes or systems didn’t work and a customer didn’t get the service or value they should have.  Sometimes their needs simply weren’t a good fit with what our business could provide (and in those cases, we probably didn’t do an adequate job qualifying them when they were still a prospect).  Sometimes their needs change and we can’t adequately help them anymore.  And sometimes – who knows?

When business owners are looking to improve their financial results, an often overlooked source of “new” customers are “old” customers who have left.  And it makes solid business sense to look to these customers.

After all, we know who they are, we usually have their contact information, and we know what they have bought from us in the past.

But before you rush into a full-on “customer reactivation campaign” and go contact all your old customers, wait.

Roll up your sleeves and do some analysis first.

What kind of analysis?

The most important one is to list your inactive customers along with the amount of business they did with you before they left.  Since inactive customers often become inactive over a period of time by slowly purchasing less and less from you, you should look at how much business they did with you each year for the last three years.

That way you can identify their true potential.  For example, an inactive customer may have purchased $1,000 of your products and services in the last year before they became inactive.  But they may have routinely purchased $5,000 in a year prior to that.

A customer like this would be a better reactivation target than one who spent $1,500 with you before they became inactive, but that’s all they ever spent in a year.

What you are looking for is the potential gain in revenue (and gross profit) you will likely realize by reactivating specific customers.

Another thing you should analyze for each inactive customer is how much of an investment they forced you to make in them.  For example, a customer who routinely purchased $3,000 of products and services from you before they became inactive may seem like a good reactivation target.  However, if they were slow to pay and therefore forced you to tie up capital, they may not be as good of a reactivation target as you first thought.

This is an important step in planning your reactivation efforts because the worst thing you can do is “win back” a bunch of inactive customers who will cause you to tie up excess capital.  That will actually cost you money rather than improve your financial results.  And even worse, they will do it because you asked them to.

Getting old customers back is often surprisingly easy.  You just need to ask.

But before you do ask them to come back, make sure you aren’t inviting people who will cause you repeat problems, and not add any profit to your business.

Sometimes old customers can be like vampires in some movies.  They won’t come in until you invite them – but once you do, they sink their fangs into you and suck the life from you.

Related articles

• What You Should Never DO or SAY to a Customer(diymarketers.com)
• Turn a Bad Customer Experience into a Good One(blogs.constantcontact.com)

When you first build your business, you vow to treat your customers like gold.  But before you know it, you get busy servicing customers and growing.  Then you start feeling the pressure.  And in this pressure, you start behaving in a way that you would never recognize.  It’s a slippery slope that starts with one small thing that doesn’t really matter and then grows into a bad habit that leads to poor customer service.

Check your behavior and and make sure that you’re not doing any of these customer killing behaviors.

1. Make them buy. The days of the pushy sales person have long been gone.  And if you’re still measuring sales performance on quantity (revenue) instead of quality (profit), then you are bound to get reluctant customers who cost money to integrate into your system and are often lost before they become truly profitable.
2. Set higher expectations than you can deliver. Studies show that expectations drive satisfaction results.  So if you set your customers’ expectations higher than you are able to deliver, they will be MORE dissatisfied than if their expectations were closer to the true experience.
3. Tell them what they want to hear.  This is another expectation issue.  Customers want to know what to expect; when will their product be delivered, when will the service guy show up, etc.  People are PLANNING their busy lives around your answer, and when you just tell them what they want to hear – and deliver something altogether different, this absolutely sends people through the roof.
4. Ignore them after the sale. Bringing on new customers is important, but loyal customers who refer do so because of their experience AFTER the sale.  There’s an old joke about a prospect that was sold on the pitch that hell would be nothing but a party – but when he showed up, saw the fire and brimstone and asked “What happened to the party?”  The response was “Yesterday you were the prospect, but today you’re the customer.”
5. Acting like a giant corporation when you’re a personal small business. Loyal customers feel like they have a relationship with the company.  When customers have the feeling that they can reach out and talk to the CEO whenever they want to (even though they rarely do it) it gives them a sense of closeness and loyalty.
6. Putting your policy about their service.  Rude and condescending tones can creep out in your communication – especially if you’re stressed.   Your customers probably aren’t as smart as you about the product or service that you sell – THAT’S WHY THEY BUY FROM YOU!  It’s that little bit of perspective that often gets lost – especially with industrial or technology products.
7. Nothing but Voicemail.  It’s getting more difficult to find people at their desk.  And today’s communication tools have increased expectations that when a customer calls, they expect a call back or a response ASAP.  Voicemail will NOT cut it anymore.
8. Not understanding what’s important in their application.  There’s nothing more frustrating to customers than feeling like they are talking into a black hole when they explain how they use your product and service in their application.

What are some of your Do’s and Don’t for powerful customer building relationships?

This article appeared on the AMEX Open Forum blog last week.   The idea for the article came out of my realizing that we spend a lot of time looking for creative ways to find and attract new customers, but often ignore doing the same thing with customers we already have.  We often get so busy servicing these customers, that we forget to treat them like opportunities.  And yet, this might actually be the easiest sales job EVER because they’ve already made the most difficult decision of all — to work with us in the first place.

Where are you spending more time; getting new customers or growing and expanding your relationship with the customers you already have?  If you’re like most companies, you’re probably spending more time and money looking for and wooing new customers than finding new opportunities within the customers you already have.

When the economy gets tough, everyone tends to go into survival mode and think that they don’t have enough customers, or that they need new customers to replace the business that they lost.    But the truth is that focusing on the customers you already have is your highest value strategy when times are tough.

If you’re afraid of losing a customer or just want to keep the customers you have loyal, here are some easy, low-cost strategies that will help you keep a customer today.

Calculate your customer net worth. The best way to inspire increase sales to existing customers is to see how much these customers have already contributed to your bottom line. The formula is actually simple: Take the total profit of your ideal customer  over the lifetime of your relationship.  Subtract all the costs associated with acquiring that customer.  That’s all there is to it.  If you’d like more detail, here’s a wonderful tool that you can use to see how much each of your ideal customers is worth.

Identify what’s most important to your customers. Focus on specific benefits that your customers are looking for such as 24/7 access to technical support instead of just service.  The best way to find out is to literally get on the phone or schedule a meeting with a handful of your best customers and simply ask them “What’s important to you when you’re buying what we’re selling?”  Then be quiet and let them just talk.  Listen for golden nuggets that may not have anything to do with WHAT you provide, but HOW you provide it.  That’s where real value lies.

Review the next customer letter you see and remove all elements of  “corporate-speak” from it. You can spot fake, empty and inauthentic language (corporate B.S.) from a mile away – so can your customer.  And they don’t like it.  Customers are drawn to real people who use plain and simple language.   Here’s how to test your document’s readability in Microsoft Word 2010: Click the File tab, and then click Options. Click Proofing. Under When correcting spelling and grammar in Word, make sure Check grammar with spelling is selected. Select Show readability statistics.

Get employees involved in building your brand and communicating with customers. Some companies shy away from having employees on Facebook while they are working.  But creating a social media presence and then actually encouraging employees to connect with customers and communicate with them via Blog, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn is a terrific way to put a personal face and connection to your company.  Before you jump into this strategy, be sure to create a social media policy and clearly outline what’s acceptable and not acceptable.  Also be sure to create corporate identities for your employees i.e.  Scott Simon, the NPR personality’s Twitter ID is @nprscottsimon.

Create a “Key Account Plan” for a Critical Customer. The most profitable customers are the ones who purchase across your product and service offering.  Yet, many of us have customers who purchase one or two products or services – when they might actually have a need for (but not know about) the other products we have available.  A key account plan puts your focus on your customer and all the different ways that you can serve them – not just with products, but with other value added services.  Think of it as a marketing plan for that one target customer.  If you’re still in a bind, you can download this strategic account plan template here.

Offer an insane guarantee. BEFORE your customer starts threatening to go to a competitor, create and offer an insane guarantee.  Business owners are often afraid of offering guarantees because they think that they will lose money.  But if you’ve done the customer net worth calculation (tip #1) you will see that offering a risk-free guarantee costs NOTHING compared to what that customer has already contributed to your bottom line.

Give them the star treatment. Identify your key customers and create a “concierge” team to service their every need.  Have a member from key areas such as sales, marketing, service, production or technology serve as the customer concierge team.  Give them a broad latitude and freedom to get things done.  If this proves successful for you, think about making this an added service that other customer can subscribe to.  I know one company that added $2 million straight to their bottom line by using this strategy.

Create an advisory board. Instead of wondering what new products or services would most interest your customer – get them involved in the development process by inviting them to participate on an advisory board.  The investment in time and money in creating this engaged customer community will pay off in spades.  Create events where you educate your customer advisory board on industry trends and then ask them the questions that keep you wondering if there’s actually demand for your idea.  You can even keep these virtual with tools like GoTo Meeting that have chat screens, polls and the ability to create recorded sessions.

Monthly “Surprise Gift”. We’ve all heard of a book of the month club, how about a surprise of the month “gift” for your key customers.  I’m not necessarily talking about the kinds of gifts that get you in trouble – maybe it’s something like “This month’s order of widget “x” was on us!  Enjoy”  Again, if you look at your key customer’s net worth to your business, isn’t it better to spend your money on keeping them loyal than throwing your money away on hopes of gaining a new customer?  Reciprocity (along with quality and service) is a powerful loyalty tool.

LOVE them. When you love a hobby or another person you take an interest in what’s happening around them.  Do the same with your customers.  If you know that your customer contact is a fan of pink flamingoes and you see a postcard or figurine in a gift shop – pick it up and send it to them.  It says that you know who they are and you listen and care.  Do at least one nice, selfless thing for a customer because you love them.

This is a short list of 10 ways to keep customers.  But YOU’RE somebody’s customer too.  Why not take this opportunity to share what you’d want to see from the companies you do business with that would keep you loyal and get you singing their praises.

If you’re a reluctant sales rep like me, then you already know how much MORE FUN it is to sell more stuff to existing customers than it is to get out there and find new customers, make nicey-nice, get them to like and trust you, get them to actually consider using your product and finally get them to buy.

If you’re lucky, they made a good decision and were a good fit for your company, your product and the level of customer service you offer.

Not every customer is for everybody.

Joseph Jaffee’s latest book “Flip the Funnel” is my latest book review on Small Business Trends.  And it holds lots of lessons for DIYMarketers.

1. Focus on the customers you already have.
2. Set up a relationship retention process that engages them and encourages them to buy more of your stuff. (the more of your stuff a single customer buys, the more profit you make — it’s a good thing)
3. If you look at a piece of customer communication and it sounds “corporatey” and empty — it probably is.  It’s a good bet it will make your customer feel — NOTHING and give them a good reason to look elsewhere the next time they need what you sell.
4. Treating your customers like individuals will SET YOU APART and differentiate you from the competition and from other alternatives — remember — they aren’t do thing (go figure).
5. It will make work FUN.  Whoever said work wasn’t supposed to be fun and that’s why they call it work — died poor.  Building loyal profitable relationships with your customers (assuming they are a good profile fit for you) is FUN and will make your life and your employees life more fun.

“Flip the Funnel” is an entertaining read — but not necessarily an easy logical read.  Jaffe himself will tell you that he’s a bit ADD and jumps around and this is true.  However – it’s perfectly possible to read this book in small doses, take in the tidbits and pull out a few things that you will do differently.

As a DIYMarketer, you can’t afford to miss out on this relatively FREE strategy that sets you apart, builds business with customers you’ve already got and increases your level of fun at work.  Pick up your very own copy of “Flip the Funnel” and see what it does for you.

This week’s book review on Small Business Trends is on “Creating Competitive Advantage” by Jaynie L. Smith.   You can see a summary of the book review as a feature video as well.  It’s one thing to read the book, get the principles and think that it’s a great idea, it’s quite another to sit yourself down and start comping up with a real competitive advantage that you can use to actually increase your sales.

I’ve got the book and will be pulling concepts from it while we go through this, but I would encourage you to get a copy for yourself – it’s stellar.  Rather than simply creating a list of what to do, we’re going to start actually doing it over a series of posts and let’s see what we come up with!

Getting Your Brain Around Competitive Advantage

A competitive advantage has three pre-requisites – otherwise it doesn’t count.

1. Must be objective.  This means that it’s a statement of fact; 3 locations, open 24 hours, etc.  If you think about it, it’s kind of like a “feature” of your business.
2. Must be quantitative. Specify how much, how many of anything you’ve got as a feature.  In the example above we made some specifics here are a few more: each service representative has at least 20 hours of training (specify what kind), your pizza delivered in 30 minutes or less or it’s free.
3. Not claimed by any other competitor.  This is where it gets tricky,  your competitive advantage could truly be something that no one else is doing OR it can be something that they are not claiming – or focusing on.  This gives you a lot of creativity.
4. No cliche. Stay away from empty phrases like “your solution provider.”

Start With a List

To get your brain bubbling take a moment and list as many “factual features” of your business.  Aim for a list of 49!

Here are a few areas to get you started:

• How would you respond to your customer when they ask “Why should I buy from you?”
• What’s most important to your customer when they are buying what you are selling?
• What features of your business give the customer what’s most important to them?
• In what ways does your business deliver what’s most important to your customer?

This is just a short list of thought starters – spend about 45 minutes on this exercise.

Stuck-Buster Ideas

Are you stuck on this?  That’s totally normal… here are a few brain-busters to get you started again.

• Draw a picture (stick figures are great) of your customer at the moment when their mind should be triggered to contact you.  What’s happening, where are they?  In what ways can you be “present” to remind them that there is a solution?
• Go outside for 10 minutes with a notebook.  Walk around and note the first thing you see.  Now make a list of all the ways that this item reminds you of the reason your customer chooses you.

Try this and let me know how you’re doing.

How did you discover or uncover your competitive advantage?