Thursday, September 27, 2012

Happy Customers

You should never under estimate the benefit of making your customers happy. There is a reason why Apple is able to convert so many people into fanboys and that reason is they go above and beyond in order to make their customers happy.

Just this morning I had to pop into the Apple store as my remote that we use for the Apple TV refused to go up. All of the other buttons on the remote worked fine and I had a feeling that it may be something to do with my daughter getting some gunk in the remote but I figured I'd have someone take a look at it before I forked over another $20 to get a new one.

My total time spent in the Apple store was less than 10 minutes. I was able to talk to a Genius about what the problem was and he asked me one question "how long ago did you buy the remote" to which I responded over a year ago. He said "okay" went and got me a new remote and sent me on my way. I didn't have to argue with him or fill out a ton of forms in order to get my new remote.

Think about that whenever you are interacting with your customers. What can you do to remove any impediments that are preventing them from enjoying or using your product. You may pass up a short term gain but you are building a long term relationship which will greatly benefit you.

Some ways that I can think to make your customers happy are:

  • Release quality
  • Don't break things that used to work
  • Take constructive criticism seriously and work to turn those folks into fans of your product
  • But don't feed the trolls. It is a waste of your time.
  • Be available to answer questions
Discuss....

1 comment:

The League said...

I spent three summers working at The Disney Store, and their approach to customer satisfaction was eye opening for a 18, 19 and 20 year old kid. They knew the value of their brand, and they knew they could set their prices accordingly, but to keep that brand image they needed to have Mickey-friendly levels of service. They had always taken returns on any item ever purchased at any time in the store, no matter the condition. But they started taking returns on anything that had a Disney character on it. Sure, it was crazy trying to figure out the value of something we didn't sell, but it made people really happy to walk in with a gift that didn't fit, etc... and walk out with cash or something else. Disney now teaches customer satisfaction classes as a small sub-business. I work in client relations to some extent, and I'd say a huge portion of understanding how to keep people happy, I learned at that job.