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THIS WEEK
Turning Great Customers into Raving Fans
ALSO IN THIS EDITION
| Customer Referral Systems: Turning Great Customers into Raving Fans |
Great customers or raving fans who tell everybody about your product and how great you are, are worth their weight in gold. They can draw qualified traffic to your business like no other source of advertising and marketing – and you don't have to pay for it other than through your fantastic service.
Generally these fabulous customers are also the ones you love to serve. They are the ones who pay on time and love what you do.
Some raving fans adopt the role of your business advocate all by themselves. These are generally the early adopters with a passion for networking. They enjoy sharing their discoveries with people and genuinely get a kick out of their friend's enjoyment of your product or service as a result.
Other great customers need a bit of help to learn how they can refer business your way – to help them become raving fans. These people are possibly more introverted in their approach, but no less passionate about your business.
If you are providing excellent service, where you pay that little bit of extra attention to each customer and their needs, then you are well on the way to creating raving fans. All you need to do now is to create a few simple systems to make it easy for them to tell people about you and to encourage them to use the systems.
There are literally thousands of ways you can make it easy for people to refer business your way, here's just a few to get you started.
Social Media Buttons
If you use social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Digg etc you can simply add buttons onto your website to make it easy for people to give you the thumbs up, or tweet about your latest article or blog post. The easier you make it, the more likely people will use it!
 Leverage Social Media
You can use social media to talk about your business and what is going on in it. For example my blog posts update my Twitter account, which updates my Facebook account which updates Plaxo ... you get the idea. Clients can read about what you are up to through their preferred social channel and then forward the details onto their friends and colleagues.
You should also use social media to talk about your favourite businesses and to share their details and not just focus on yourself. If you are generous with your referrals, others will be similarly generous.
Tell-a-friend scripts
These are those little scripts you see at the end of newsletters allowing people to forward them to friends. They also are the pages on websites asking you to give the names and emails of 5 friends in order to receive some additional bonus. These should be used with caution as they often fly dangerously close to not complying with anti-spam regulations.
Say thank you
One of the main things about human psychology is the behaviour that is recognised and rewarded gets repeated. If you want people to refer people to you – thank them when they do. This can be anything from a simple phone call, to a card to a gift. The important thing is letting people know how much you truly value their referring clients to you.
You also need to close the feedback loop – keeping them informed about the progress of the person they have referred. By keeping them informed (within bounds of confidentiality of course), then they feel more involved in your process and more likely to refer more people to you.
Demonstrate the behaviour you want
Often people are so caught up in their day to day lives they need a trigger to prompt them to action. Another key aspect of psychology is that people will follow the lead of others. In groups, the level of disclosure about their happiness with a service or a part of their life is generally set by the first person who speaks and shares their experience.
Skilled facilitators know this and either set the mindset of the group by going first and talking about their experiences to the same depth as the information they would like to receive, or "plant" the first speaker for the group.
In copywriting this can be as simple as including a testimonial from another client in the letter asking the client to write a new testimonial about you.
In networking groups you can use your 1 minute "elevator speech" to not only talk about you but to promote someone else in the room you respect and admire. It is amazing how many people will do the same after you start the process.
All you are doing is demonstrating how easy it is and how to do it effectively. By showing people what to do and how to do it you will increase the number of great referrals.
Ask for testimonials as soon as the job is done
Always ask for testimonials from great customers once the job has been completed. You can do this through feedback forms, or simply just a letter or phone call asking the person to jot their thoughts.
Yet another psychological fact – with repetition people tend to become more definite in their views. This means they may start out by saying "they were good" but if the question is repeated they will move over time to "they were great". People, who give testimonials that are shared with others, tend to become more of a raving fan.
The bottom line is to celebrate and encourage your raving fans. Help them to realise how much you appreciate them and all they do for your business. Say thank you, be grateful and enjoy the added business they bring.
You can join Make-a-Referral week - a free strategy to help small businesses learn and make great referrals, March 9-13.
| HR Tip of the Week - Encouraging Employee Referrals |
 Employee referrals are a brilliant source of qualified applicants. When looking to fill vacant positions before looking outside your organisation, actively ask your employees to circulate the vacancy to their friends, family and colleagues.
People employed by referral generally have a better understanding of the culture of your company, are faster at getting up to speed with the role and generally have an in built mentor in their friend.
Employees who refer someone who is employed tend to be protective of their friend, and go out of their way to show the good side of the company - often increasing their own productivity in the process.
If many employees refer the vacancy to their colleagues you gain a good indicator of the organisational health and morale of your company. If you get no referrals or poor quality referrals, you need to take a look at the culture of your organisation.
I usually recommend paying your employees for their referrals. I suggest they get some form of initial letter of thanks with a small gift, followed by a large gift once the person they referred successfully completes their probation.
After all they have saved you thousands of dollars in recruitment agency placement fees - so a Red Balloon Days gift voucher or cash bonus is appropriate.
 Most of you would know Ken Blanchard of the one minute manager fame. He has made his life's work to take complex business ideas and make them simple to read and understand through the form of parables.
Raving Fans helps change the way you think about customers. Through the journey of a new area manager you learn the essentials of what makes brilliant customer service - and how to create raving fans in the process of meeting your customer's needs.
This is definitely a book to read through more than once - particularly the last bit on delivering the vision plus 1%. This is the area that most businesses get stuck on (mine included) and one of the most important parts of customer service.
If you use Facebook then the changing of the terms of use a few weeks back definitely would have affected you. There was such an uproar over the terms that Facebook was forced to return to their old terms until they could "get it right".
One of my colleagues is Kay Lam-Beattie, a specialist IT Lawyer with her company IdeaLaw. In this post she shared her view of the whole debacle - only going to show that it's the little things that can quickly lose you customers if you don't think it through properly. It also goes to show the importance of well drafted website terms of use.
Customer Service Consistency - The Holy Grail of Customer Service
exuberantly yours
Ingrid
Heart Harmony
PS: This week's Small Business Tips blog also included Business referrals - make a referral week & yet another tall niche going begging.
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