Getting Your Customers to Love You

Now that I am retired and can look back over my professional career, one of the things that pleases me most is knowing that my customers loved me. It certainly wasn’t because I am anything special, but rather it was because of what I did and what anybody can do.

So, in this post, I share with you how you can get your customers to fall in love with you and with your company.

To help drive home the points, we’ll use a couple of well-known companies as examples: Apple, which is a large success because of how it takes its customers into account, and Facebook, which is a success despite how it handles its customers.

The Facebook Example

I have been tinkering with Facebook for a couple of months, and have added a few applications to it, such as Visual Bookshelf and Blog Friends. A few days ago, I received emails from both of these applications:

• Visual Bookshelf: “You’ve been reading ‘State of Fear’ for more than a week. Still true?”
• Blog Friends: “Blog Friends has been unable to index your blog for over 48 hours.”

My mental answer to Visual Bookshelf = what’s it to you? Yes I am reading it, and it is not a spellbinder, and I will finish it when I finish it. And, my mental answer to Blog Friends = what’s your problem? Everybody else seems to be able to access my site just fine.

This made me wonder whether the Facebook leadership is aware that it allows applications that annoy people like this, and whether they even care. Things like this make it real hard to love Facebook. One more email from Visual Bookshelf and Blog Friends, and I will drop them. I dislike annoying applications. If the whole Facebook experience turns out being like this, I’ll drop it altogether.

The basic social-media concept of Facebook is a winner. It has driven their success. But, how they handle applications seems to be a different matter. It does not appear that they have thought through the whole customer experience of dealing with the applications (and how the apps can be frustrating at times).

Their handling of applications is analogous to a buffet restaurant that has a dozen cooks that it lets come in off the streets: it doesn’t matter how nice the service is by anyone else on the customer “front line,” because the experience is also determined by the cooks, who are a gamble.

• Update: The developer of the Visual Bookshelf application has an excellent comment below on how the email notifications can be turned off. I appreciate Adam taking the time to clarify this for all of us. I also should note that many people may like to receive such notifications. And, except for the email notifications, which I now know I can turn off, I very much like the Visual Bookshelf application … it is extraordinarily well designed and has a number of interesting features. In fact, if you are a Facebook user, I encourage you to try it out.

The Apple Example

Contrast this with the iTunes experience. For the most part, people love their whole iPod/Touch/iPhone and iTunes experience. And it is no accident … Apple thought about the whole customer experience upfront.

This point was made very well in this article that Thomas recently made me aware of. The author of that blog (an excellent blog, by the way) made the following observation:

The folks at Apple realized they weren’t actually selling a music player, they were selling a music purchase and playback system. I think their integration of the whole thing, from iTunes out, is what made the iPod take off.

That is, Apple has done so well with iTunes partly because they have thought through the whole customer experience. (Another part of the reason for Apple’s success, based on a recent Steve Jobs quote, is that they build only products that they people can fall in love with.)

Wrap-up

The underlying principle, that of empathizing with your customers, applies in all markets, not just tech market examples we have talked about.

For example, back to restaurant example: chances are you would be a much more satisfied customer at a restaurant that recognizes that you and your spouse are not just there to eat, but that it is also an romantic experience for you. Such a restaurant would play as much to that as they would to your desire for good food.

In reflecting back on my work history, I am convinced my customers thought highly of me because I tried to think about their whole experience with our company and what their total needs were. Thinking about only the task at hand, or the single product being discussed at the time, is insufficient.

In summary, a key to getting your customers to fall in love with you (and your company) is to be aware of what their needs and desires are across the whole range of customer experience. It is sort of a “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

This is not the only factor, of course: it also helps when you love your customers. And, integrity matters very much, as well. I suspect that you can cite some additional points in the comments.