Where I grew up in Nottingham for a moment there was a clothes shop that had a bell near the exit door for people to ring if they'd had good service. It worked, people rang it. We all know how fast bad news travels. And we know that people pass on bad service moans more readily than good service praise.
Well guess what? We're all connected now. Instantly. 200 friends on Facebook, 300 followers on Twitter. What about Yelp local map-based reviews? Ready to risk it?
Building customer value is partly about reputation management online. It's about being good enough that people will say so to their friends, bringing you free business back. Let's face it, if you were breathtakingly awesome you wouldn't need marketing, you'd be mobbed. What stops us? The same things that affect everyone .. time, money, ability. But the point is, put some of your marketing effort into the service and keep improving it. Tweak it until you are awesome. And tweaking can help because while we're measuring the effect of this or that tweak we see all the traffic to your website and what they do. We see their search queries, and how they react to you. Wondering how you can build your business? Check out what people really want. Pick one. Do it.
But actually before that, it's about having a great website that really helps people. I'm 6'6" tall, when I go to a clothes shop they could throw away 95% of the stuff because it won't fit me. So .. just show me what will fit for starters. Then, I've blue eyes. So show me blue stuff, it suits me. OK, now we're talking. I'm looking for a jacket, but I don't like the ones you're showing me. Will you let me know when you get new jackets that fit me and would suit me and my blue eyes? And next time I come to your website, just show me what I like.
See what I mean? It's good old fashioned service. We've gotten out of the habit of providing it but .. it's coming back. It's coming back because we're all connected now. And there's nothing we like better than great service. Except moaning about bad service. This is a revolution, guys, a social media revolution. The customers are in control. Better be good. Better be ready. Let's tweak.
John Allsopp, Tweaker Extraordinaire