How little things can go a long way to solidify customer satisfaction and loyalty

There are some companies where employees do not really care whether you have a bad buying experience - either acting completely unapologetic or worse, making you feel like it's all your fault.

Not so with Lenovo and Starbucks.

After my recent buying experience with Sony I bought a Lenovo laptop. And just like Sony they ran out of parts for my laptop just before their promised ship date. Unlike Sony, they are the ones that alerted me of the manufacturing delay. The email was very apologetic, gave me an option to cancel my order if I could not wait, and offered me a free gift for the inconvenience if I decided to stick with them. Guess what - I took the free battery and was not in the least annoyed with the delay. In fact it made me feel good about the way the company was dealing with customer problems. Because at the end of the day, you know that something will always go wrong - and it's not the fact that something goes wrong that makes you lose customers - it is the way you choose to deal with those exceptions that affects customer loyalty.

The same happened at Starbucks this morning. I was in a bit of rush and found out that they just started brewing the dark roast and that it would take 4 minutes to get my coffee. Watching coffee brew for 4 minutes is an eternity. I was a bit miffed - thinking that maybe Starbucks' employees had gotten infected with the same bug that is plaguing their neighbor . Sensing my unhappiness, all three employees at the store this morning found a way to apologize, and one gave me a coupon for a free drink the next time I visit a Starbucks. Even the coupon apologizes - telling me that they hope that my next Starbucks experience will be a good one!

Guess who I have talking about all morning?

OK - enough about customer service now, let's get back to marketing...
...but wait...isn't this marketing? :)

Quoted from : http://www.emergencemarketing.com/

Service delivery Strategies

Traveling yesterday, I realized that there are two popular strategies for service delivery. One is a coping strategy and one is a marketing strategy.

You can deliver the lowest permitted amount, or you can work to create the most remarkable experience you can imagine.

Stop for a second before jumping to the conclusion that the latter is always what you do.

When I pay a bill, I don't put more money in the envelope then I'm billed for. And I don't put more stamps on the envelope than the USPS requires, even if I'm in a particularly generous mood. Living life like Spinal Tap (always at 11) is inefficient if not impossible. Very often, we find ourselves doing the least amount of work permitted because, after all, we have more important things to spend our time on.

Smart marketers understand two things. The first is that you must pick your battles, deciding in which areas 'most' matters and living with 'least' the rest of the time. The second contradicts that and makes this a lot more complex: Least spreads.

You've seen this in countless organizations. A few people get in the habit of least, then a whole department does, and the next thing you know, it's an entire airline. Least is contagious.

Really smart marketers understand this: the best way to fight the contagion is to pay what it costs to eliminate least everywhere you look. It's ridiculous to expect most in all things (your postage bill will get out of hand), but I think it''s possible to work to stamp out least.

Link to Seth Godin's post..

Reward Creativity

It is usually important to reward staff in some way for creating and innovating quality solutions to problems. This need not necessarily be financial but should follow rapidly before the effort has faded from memory. In what ways would you like to be rewarded? Some organizations have instituted 'suggestion schemes' - with or without financial rewards - whereas others see creativity and innovation as a natural part of what they expect from all their employees. Sony has offered cash rewards for the 'best mistake of the month'!! This is not to encourage mistakes, because the mistake has to be written up so that others can avoid making the same error. This approach counters the typical survival response (found in 'punishmment' cultures) of trying to hide one's own mistakes.

The Japanese see problems as 'golden eggs' and welcome them and see them very much as a source of improvements and brand new solutions. Being more community-minded than the Europeans or Americans, they will also post a description of a problem in a public space (e.g. the corridor) with the expectation that colleagues will respond by helping to resolve the issue.

Quoted from 'Creative Problem Solving' by David O'Dell