As I mentioned in last week’s post, companies of all sizes are thinking about how they should grow and with President Obama promising incentives to hire new employees, there will be more hands on deck. While growth is generally measured in customers gained, beware of ignoring or forgetting the customers already on board because losing them can be extremely damaging to your organization.
I've been told for years that a happy customer will tell a few friends about your firm, but an unhappy customer will shout from the rooftops to anyone within earshot how bad you are. Take this extreme example; Dave Carroll and his band Sons Of Maxwell were passengers on a United Airlines flight from Canada through Chicago and were forced to watch as his $3,500 Taylor guitar was slammed around by the ground crew. When he asked United for some attention to this matter they basically snubbed him. In this day of viral growth on the Internet, what did he do? He penned a clever little ditty and produced a music video for YouTube!
Cute, eh? But how many people really saw the video? Well, on the first day of posting it received 150,000 views. At last count the "United Breaks Guitars" video has been seen by over 7.6 million visitors! You think any of them might want to take a trip somewhere someday? Not to mention the video and story were picked up by media outlets all over the world, including Fox News, CNN, and even "The View." Now he's a sought-after speaker about customer service and United had to shell out cash to try and safe face.
So the bottom line is find ways to exceed your customers' expectations, or at the very least address a situation before it arises. You never know when you might be the next YouTube parody!
I've been told for years that a happy customer will tell a few friends about your firm, but an unhappy customer will shout from the rooftops to anyone within earshot how bad you are. Take this extreme example; Dave Carroll and his band Sons Of Maxwell were passengers on a United Airlines flight from Canada through Chicago and were forced to watch as his $3,500 Taylor guitar was slammed around by the ground crew. When he asked United for some attention to this matter they basically snubbed him. In this day of viral growth on the Internet, what did he do? He penned a clever little ditty and produced a music video for YouTube!
Cute, eh? But how many people really saw the video? Well, on the first day of posting it received 150,000 views. At last count the "United Breaks Guitars" video has been seen by over 7.6 million visitors! You think any of them might want to take a trip somewhere someday? Not to mention the video and story were picked up by media outlets all over the world, including Fox News, CNN, and even "The View." Now he's a sought-after speaker about customer service and United had to shell out cash to try and safe face.
So the bottom line is find ways to exceed your customers' expectations, or at the very least address a situation before it arises. You never know when you might be the next YouTube parody!
0 comments:
Post a Comment