With only one retail location, Zane’s Cycles of Connecticut is one of the three largest bike shops in the United States. They sell $15 million each year in bicycles, and bike supplies, with a relationship grounded in customer trust. For example, on any given day you might see a $6,000 bike go out the door for a test drive without any one of Zane’s folks asking to collect the customer’s identification or any type of collateral. “Do you want my license?” is often asked by the customer. The response is always, “Nope, just have a good ride.” Zane’s makes this decision because they want potential customers to know that in this world there’s a store that trusts them, and it’s Zane’s. Made as a decision to embrace customers, this decision also sends a strong message to Zane’s staff. “This is not about protecting ourselves,” owner Chris Zane says. “We’re in the people business, not the thing business. This decision helps our staff understand and act on that key difference.” It gives customers confidence and a lasting impression that they have found a place where they’ll want to do business.

Each Customer’s Lifetime Value is $12,500.

Zane’s Won’t Risk That. Zane’s Cycles decided to act on its belief that the majority of customers do what’s right. “We calculate the lifetime value of every customer at $12,500,” says President Chris Zane. “Why start out that customer relationship by questioning their integrity? We choose to believe our customers.” New Zane’s employees often suggest that they protect the business by taking customers’ keys or wallets when they test drive a bicycle. Chris Zane firmly says “no” to this suggestion. This is when employees and customers realize Zane’s is a service business, not a product business. And it sets the tone for how they interact with people. It frees them to do the right thing.

Trust Is Reciprocated: Zane’s Loses Only Five Bikes a Year.

Customers feel trusted by Zane’s. And that trust is returned to Zane’s. Of the 4,000 bikes they sell each year, only about 5 are stolen during test drives. For Zane’s it’s just not worth having the whole attitude of the company change because of the attitudes of five dishonest people. Zane’s believes customers are good. That attitude frees Zane’s to grow. They have achieved an average annual growth rate of 23 percent since opening in 1981. Why not take a page from Zane’s, and take a hard look at your policies? Change or eliminate any that exist to “protect” you from your customers.



Do You Believe Customers Are an Asset or a Cost Center?

Zane’s Cycles doesn’t take collateral from customers who test ride its bikes. Of the 4,000 sold each year, only 5 bikes are stolen. Zane’s calculates the lifetime value of a customer at $12,500. “Why start that relationship by questioning someone’s integrity?” asks Chris Zane.

• Do you know the value of your customers? Does everyone in your company?
• Does how you value customers guide decision making?
• Are you investing in customers or managing costs?
• How would you rate your intent and ability to understand the value of customers and invest in them?
• Do your decisions on how you value customers earn you “beloved” status today?
• Let’s take a hard look at your policies. What one thing can you change or eliminate that “nickels and dimes” your customers, especially your best customers?

Suggesting a CCO may seem frivolous to leaders who believe they already focus on customers. There’s often a proliferation of tactics and projects underway…the problem is they don’t amount to anything significant for customers. So first decide: will leaders be okay with someone (other than themselves) driving consensus on customer strategy and deliverables? You may be saying, “We have consensus now.” I’m sure that you’ve had some good meetings, but how much of it stuck? When they were over, did everyone return to their respective corners and business as usual? Getting company alignment is tricky. You may need someone full time to ensure it exists for your direction with customers.

What about sustaining the work? After the first and second meeting of what I call “the funky task force” on the customer work, people start to lose interest. You know these meetings. The kick-off has forty people at the table, some who clamored for an invite. One month later, six regularly show up. And the person who got the job to run the task force layered on top of his/her “regular” job? Well, they’re losing interest fast. Driving this work needs hard-wired participation. Do you have headcount and staff time commitments to drive it forward?

Now to the roadmap and action plan: let’s discuss the sticky wicket of “how” to move past the hoopla of meetings and empty commitments. Do you have a central roadmap that everyone follows on how you’ll drive the customer work and measure progress? I didn’t think so. How about consistent metrics everyone agrees to? We have metrics galore in our companies and of course the ‘customer’ is now on our scorecards. But these are typically neither clear nor connected down to the operational level.

Roles and responsibilities and holding people accountable are a slippery slope in the customer work. This is about the hand-offs between the silos. Most companies need a task list that clearly states what each part of the organization will do and when to get the priorities accomplished. But most don’t have one. Do you?

Is funding customer projects like pulling teeth? This may be due to duplicate spending across the organization. Everything is pitched as an individual program from inside the silos. At planning time these investments are often vulnerable in the first round of budget cuts. Why? Because each project shows up as a one-off tactic. There’s rarely an annual plan for understanding and managing customers as a key corporate asset – determining how many were lost and why and pooling resources to keep and grow profitable customers. Why? Because it’s no one’s job to do this job.

And finally, does the hoopla have any chance of sustainability as things stand now? Are leaders committing to customers, but not changing the metrics or the motivation to realign business priorities? Is the back-up position still about counting sales but not counting customers? For what actions are the most “Atta-boys” doled out? The customer work will not emerge as a priority of the organization until people’s success and career paths are tied to their accountability for how their actions impact customers. How far along are you with this? Are you heading in the right direction?

Most leaders wouldn’t refute that any of these actions are important. They want them to happen. They’ve always wanted them. Their failure has been in assuming the company could miraculously defy the laws of the silos to make them a reality. Separate motivation, the metrics and the mechanics have stayed firmly rooted in each silo. And they will continue to stay there until someone duct-tapes the silos together in a unified and executable customer plan. Is it time you established a Chief Customer Officer to connect your company for customers? Here are the questions to help you determine if the time is right, and if you have the support required to make the role a success:

1. There is someone in our company who clarifies what we are to accomplish with customers.

__ YES there is __ NO there is not

Implementation Tip: Agreements need to be established with functional owners across the organization. The CCO or executive leadership must not do this in a vacuum and then try to “throw the brick over the wall” to those leaders to rubber-stamp.

2. There is a clear process to drive alignment for what will be accomplished.

__YES there is __ NO there is not

Implementation Tip: The best CEOs drive people into discussion and probe for agreement or dissent. They make it okay to disagree and debate until there is commitment and alignment.

3. We have a roadmap for the customer work and know where progress will be measured.

__ YES we do __ NO we do not

Implementation Tip: Establish a team with at least one person from every operational area. This group needs to get into the ramifications and work involved in getting the priorities done.

4. Clear metrics exist for measuring progress which everyone agrees to use.

__ YES they do __ NO they do not

Implementation Tip: Pick a few key metrics that everyone understands, knows their roles in and can follow. The large score cards we have all created have become almost meaningless because they are filled with so much data.

5. There is real clarity of everyone’s roles and responsibilities.

__ YES there is __ NO there is not

Implementation Tip: This is about the handoffs between the silos. Make sure that there is a task list that clearly states how the organization must come together to get the priorities accomplished.

6. People really participate and care about the customer work.

__YES they do __NO they do not

Implementation Tip: This requires a commitment from each functional leader on the headcount and staff time they will contribute. Create a formalized team where 25 to 50 percent of people’s time from areas throughout the company is dedicated to the customer work.

7. Appropriate resources are allocated to make a real difference to customers.

__ YES there are __NO there are not

Implementation Tip: The key here is to have an organized annual planning approach that dedicates time to the customer objectives and customer investment. To achieve success, specific actions with defined parameters of what needs to be accomplished must be identified.

8. There is an understandable process for people to work together.

__ YES there is __ NO there is not

Implementation Tip: This work is as clear as mud. It starts with a high-level frenzy that in the blink of an eye has people going back to business as usual. The process for how the work will be defined, reviewed, executed, and rewarded has got to be laid out clearly.

9. The work is considered attainable.

__ YES it is __NO it is not

Implementation Tip:. What I learned is not to abandon strategy but to dole it out in bite-size pieces. You need to know the end game. But then you need to bridge the gat between strategy and execution so people can work it into budgets, priorities, and planning.”

10. A process exists for marketing achievements to customers and internally.

__ YES it does __NO it does not

Implementation Tip: When you don’t tell people internally what’s going on with the customer, it’s all white noise to them. No report equals no action. You must make a point of marketing back to both your customers and internally inside the organization.

11. Recognition and reward is wired to motivate customer work.

__ YES it is __ NO it is not

Implementation Tip: The customer work is not going to seem important until people start to be publicly commended and rewarded for it. Make every company gathering an opportunity to call out customer achievements and reward people for them.

In this era of social media, companies who embrace customer feedback and “believe” the words of their customers earn the right to growth. They realize that customers turn to each other more than to advertising and campaigns. Here’s how one “beloved company,” CustomInk fearlessly listens to customers and how it fuels their growth.

Earn New Customers Through Past Performance.

CustomInk prints T-shirts for well over 100,000 groups and families per year. Each order is assigned a designer who personally reviews and inspects each shirt, because, let’s face it, there’s nothing worse than having your typing error printed on 1,000 T-shirts. For example, if you accidentally mistype the word “annual” as “anual” in your T-shirt design, someone at CustomInk who has reviewed your design will catch that typo for you, sparing the obvious pain and suffering you would have otherwise felt when you opened the box of 1,000 T-shirts for your “Anual Fun Run.” But CustomInk doesn’t want potential customers to take their word for the fact that they deliver this level of service—they want their customers to speak for them. So whatever a customer types in as his or her post-purchase online feedback appears word-for-word on the front page of CustomInk’s Web site. And, in this case, to show the authenticity of the comments, customers’ typos stay.

Customers Should Be Completely Informed.

Founder Marc Katz said, “We thought about cleaning customers’ reviews and making them more like testimonials, but we decided that doesn’t mean anything to the customer. Any company can pick a few great reviews. It’s the fact that we leave these uncensored and show all of them. It’s the 1 in a 100 few unhappy comments that show these are real.” So CustomInk puts its money where their customers’ mouths are. Customers tell other customers if they believe CustomInk is the place to trust for T-shirts for their charity event, or the T-shirts that their grandpa and entire family will wear at his 100th birthday party.

Revenue grew 77 percent from 2006 to 2009, fueled by customer feedback.

CustomInk believes and trusts customers to speak for the company. This brave decision to “bare” customer feedback has fueled significant double-digit growth every year since their inception. Revenue of $13.5 million in 2004 is now nearly $62 million in 2009. And this growth is largely organic, driven by customer love, and with no backing of venture capital. For its 284 employees, living up to customer accolades energizes them; people want to be part of a company that believes its customers. Consider giving your customers a forum to connect and convince each other to become your customers. It does take some daring, and trust in your customers’ words. But it is a powerful way to engage your company in customer feedback and to drive accountability in resolving the issues that customers bring up.

Do You Dare to Bare What Your Customers Share?

CustomInk decided to put uncensored customer reviews on its Web site because they believe in the truth of their customers’ words. They trust customers to guide potential customers.

• Do you trust current customers to guide future customers with their feedback?
• Do you censor customer reviews? Do you believe in the truth of your customers’ words?
• How would you rate your intent and ability to believe feedback?
• How would your customers say you are doing? Do customers rave about how you trust them today?
• How does your decision to believe and share customer feedback compare with this beloved company?
• Do your decisions for believing in the truth of your customers’ words earn you “beloved” status today?
• Consider one way to give your customers a forum to connect and convince each other to become your customers.

If you know the answers to these issues, your ability to find someone to fit and enrich your culture is yards ahead of most. It’s about being deliberate.

Leaders in beloved companies don’t worry about hiring a great employee and having him leave in three months. Instead they worry about hiring a bad employee and having him stay for three years.

In last year’s labor market, however, managers were grateful if they got any applicants for a job – let alone highly qualified applications. As of Sept. 2009, the employment rate was at 3%, meaning only 3% of new jobs open out there are new. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that there were 3.0 million job openings on the last business day of May 2011. The rate of hires for U.S. nonfarm jobs remained at 3.1 percent, and the separations rate rose slightly from 2.9 percent in April to 3.1 percent in May. In these times, it’s tempting to fill a job with the first seemingly qualified applicant.

When this temptation hits, remember that studies show that the single greatest contributor to performance failure and job dissatisfaction is lack of fit with organizational culture. If someone doesn’t align with the company’s core beliefs and values, it will be very difficult for that person not only to develop effective relationships, but to deliver your “special blend of magic,” the personality stamp of your culture.

So here’s your challenge question from my book “I Love You More Than My Dog: Five Decisions That Drive Extreme Customer Loyalty in Good Times and Bad“. It’s a question about clarity and how clear your decision guides your company in one direction or another when you make one of the most important decisions: hiring.

To combat the issue of performance failure and job dissatisfaction, many companies survey reasons why new recruits leave in the first 90 days on the job. Most frequently reported are issues with an immediate leader and workplace culture not as expected.

A recent article in HR Magazine points out that more and more organizations are struggling to make good cultural judgments during their recruiting process. Cultural fit is not being assessed as thoroughly as skills and background. A decade ago, technical skills and experience were the core prerequisites for a successful candidate. But as business is changing and brand personality is emerging as a competitive advantage, cultural fit is being recognized as vital for sustaining success.

Time pressures and lack of dedicated processes are commonly cited reasons for not assessing cultural fit. While a number of methods, such as on-site visits, panel interviews, and trial work periods, are effective in determining culture fit, behavioral interviews are one of the the best tools for identifying candidates who have the right-fit characteristics. Behavioral interviews ask a candidate to pinpoint specific instances in which a particular behavior was exhibited in the past. But, the real question is not what to ask during an interview, but what to ask before the selection process even begins. Ensuring the right employee for your organization goes beyond job requirements and skill match. It comes down to the very essence of your organization and its culture: Will the candidate “fit the soul”?

Take it from a company who gets it. Internet clothing and shoe retailer Zappos.com reached over $1.9 billion in gross merchandise sales in 2009. Its growth is powered by service and a whimsical culture. Zappos’s secret is attracting people to work for them who find it natural, to be “a little weird at times” — a core cultural value. It relies on a rigorous interview process, starting with a culture interview, followed by dialogue with folks throughout the company to find just the right people who will fit in and feel at home. And even once on board, Zappos continues its quest to make sure that there’s a match between candidate and company — offering new hires $2,000 to leave if they don’t fit the culture!

In good times and in bad, beloved companies that DECIDE WITH CLARITY OF PURPOSE understand the importance of selecting not only qualified employees, but employees who “fit.”

Where are you now? Are you deliberate? Do you make hiring the most important decision? Let’s talk this out!

Want to learn about other tools to help you earn customers who drive the success and growth of your business? Pick up a copy of: “I Love You More Than My Dog: Five Decisions That Drive Extreme Customer Loyalty in Good Times and Bad.”

2. Not first defining the customer experience and gaining alignment on the path of actions.

3. Not breaking the work into actionable pieces and not understanding what “success” is.

4. Attaching early metrics to outcome metrics rather than operational metrics people can impact

5. Not having executives engaged in the effort.

6. Not having clear communication to the organization that walks people constantly through the roadmap, and actions, and behaviors to model

7. Taking actions based on what they think, not based on understanding what customers need.

Alma Rettew bought a holiday gift for a friend, and asked L.L. Bean, whom she bought it from, to get it to her friend on a specific date (the company has a service to do this). Unfortunately, there was a glitch in the system, and the gift arrived before the holiday, spoiling Alma’s surprise for her friend. When Alma called in to L.L. Bean to register her complaint, her fear and “dukes up” concern that she might have to fight to get her situation addressed was quickly disarmed by the quick and rapid response she received. Ms. Rettew was offered two options for solving her problem. She could receive a refund, or have a complimentary duplicate of her gift sent to her recipient at the correct time. In addition, she received a sincere apology and a promise that the company would contact her friend and explain what had transpired. The burden would fall on L.L. Bean, not her, to make things right with her friend. After all, it was their mistake, and they were accountable. All corrective actions were successfully completed. And while this solution was probably an unusual experience for Ms. Rettew, it is not an uncommon occurrence at L.L. Bean.

Empower employees to do the right thing

The L.L. Bean guarantee gives customers peace of mind, it frees the company’s front line to do the right thing, and it keeps them close to their small-town company culture. “Sell good merchandise at a reasonable profit; treat your customers like human beings and they’ll always come back for more,” Leon Leonwood Bean said in 1912 when he founded the company. It remains true today. Bean also said, “A lot of people have fancy things to say about Customer Service, but it’s just a day-in, day-out, ongoing, never-ending, persevering, compassionate kind of activity.”

Satmetrix, the Net Promoter® company and leader in customer experience programs, just released additional findings from its 2011 Net Promoter Industry Benchmarks study. The new information provides additional proof that Leon Leonwood Bean was correct in asserting that training employees to excel in customer service and selling quality merchandise would create return business. The study sites that the top reason U.S. consumers defect is rude or disinterested employees. And the second reason is poor product or service quality. Mr. Bean knew that hiring and training good people, to do an excellent job at selling his superior products would be the best way to keep customers coming back.

Honor the employees who serve the customers

L.L. Bean has sustained their respect for customers and the front line throughout the entire history of the company. From a one-man operation to its place as a global organization with sales of $1.5 billion today, the company has grown by honoring its customers—and by honoring the employees who serve customers by giving them the trust and the tools to do what’s right. In 2008, L.L. Bean was ranked the number one “Online Leader” by Women’s Wear Daily. BusinessWeek magazine named L.L. Bean as one of its top 25 service “champs” in 2008, 2009, and in 2010, L.L. Bean was named the number one service “champ.” Also, in 2010, L.L. Bean ranks in the top two of clothing catalog companies in the Brand Keys Customer Loyalty Index.

Can Our Front Line Rescue Customers?

L.L. Bean’s guarantee puts power in the hands of their front line. It gives them freedom to think on their feet and offer options without putting the customer on hold or checking with a manager.

- When a customer calls who is unhappy, does your front line have “permission” to do the right thing?
- Are there options for them to evaluate and exercise using their own good judgment?
- Do you nurture the ability in the front line to think on its feet?

Want to learn about other tools to help you earn customers who drive the success and growth of your business? Pick up a copy of: “I Love You More Than My Dog: Five Decisions That Drive Extreme Customer Loyalty in Good Times and Bad.”

Here’s the mission of CXPA.org:

Here’s why Bruce Temkim and I co-founded this organization:

• There are many customer experience networking groups, but the industry has hit a stage where it needs a single, collective voice to map its evolution
• We want to help customer experience professionals embed customer experience management skill sets across their organization
• Our goal is to identify standards and best practice approaches and transfer those skills across the industry
• We want to ensure that that customer experience management continues to generate a vibrant set of opportunities for customer experience practitioners

The CXPA recognizes that there is an ecosystem of customer experience professionals which includes companies that are committed to customer experience leadership, individual professionals who are committed to customer experience efforts, and vendors that help companies improve their customer experience. So there are membership options for all of those constituents.

We’re thrilled to already have a great group of corporate members including…

 Adobe, Clarabridge, Confirmit, Cox Communications, EMC, Fidelity Investments, Healthy Directions, Medallia, Microsoft, Mindshare Technologies, ResponseTek, RightNow Technologies, Safeco Insurance, SAP, SapientNitro, Strativity Group, Symantec, Tealeaf Technology, Thunderhead, Universal Mind, and Vovici.

These companies, along with any corporate members that sign up within three months from today, will be considered Founding Corporate Members. Keep an eye for upcoming announcements about additional Corporate Founding Members!

We also have some great sponsors, who will make it possible for the CXPA to deliver additional services to our members. So I want to thank our initial Gold Sponsors: Adobe, Confirmit, Medallia, RightNow Technologies, SapientNitro,  and Tealeaf Technology; Silver Sponsors: Clarabridge and ResponseTek; and Bronze Sponsor: Mindshare Technologies

Here are the CXPA membership opportunities:

• Individuals can join for $195
• Companies can join for between $2,500 and $10,000 based on size
• Non-profits, government agencies and educational organizations can join for $1,500

And, of course, you can become a sponsor with investments that start at $5,000.

The bottom line: The CXPA is here to help YOU succeed!

Here are five of my favorite questions from my book, “I Love You More than My Dog: Five Decisions that Drive Extreme Customer Loyalty in Good Times and Bad.” In this post I will cover the first three questions, and in the second post, I’ll give you the second two and some actions to take back and work through with your organization.

Question 1:  Do You Consider Customers an Asset or a Cost Center?

The everyday company thinks about their business as getting sales out of customers. That’s the name of the game.  The beloved company understands and believes that the real goal of the business is to grow the asset of the customer base.  And to grow their customer base, they employ practices that “earn the right” to growth.  For example Zane’s Cycles in Connecticut knows that the lifetime value of every customer is about $12,500 – if they punctuate the experience correctly and honor the customer.  This belief motivates Zane’s to abolish “bad profit” practices, such as nickel and diming customers on services.  They instead invest in the relationships.  One of the greatest examples of this is that they have a pat rule that anything a customer needs that costs a dollar or less, they always give away.

To believe in your customers as the asset of your business, you need to be able to measure that asset.  One of the first actions we always take when we begin the customer experience transformation journey with clients is to quantify the value of customers.  Initially, this is a culture and alignment exercise:  to gain agreement on what is a “new” customer and what is a “lost” customer, and to agree on how we assign value to customers.  That in itself is powerful cross-silo work critical to your experience transformation.  Then, we work inside the company databases to align the data to enable us to do the “customer math” to know incoming and outgoing customers each month.  We often kick-start this focus by having leaders begin each meeting with the growth or loss of the company’s ability to manage the customer asset.  Only when you begin to think this way, will you rethink policies, processes and commitments regarding growing your business from a customer perspective.  Where are you in this process? Do your leaders commit to viewing and managing customers as an asset of your business?  Is your customer data clean and consistent enough to get an accurate measure of customer value?

Question 2: Do You Know Your Customers?

Frequently product development, or process or engineering decisions are made inside conference rooms.  We need to understand our customers’ lives to serve their lives.

Understanding how your customers go through their day, how you intersect their day and what motivates their behavior in interacting with you are the keys to building an operation that pulls customers back to you.  ZARA, a retailer based in Spain has designed their complete product manufacturing process around knowing their customers, around tracking their buying habits, and around hard wiring customer listening into their sales cycle.  They employ over 200 designers to keep the fashion cycles fast because they know that’s what their customers desire. This operational commitment enables ZARA to get a new product into the stores within 15 days when the requests warrant it.  As a result, their customers go into their stores an average of 17 times a year.  85% of Zara’s merchandise sells at full price.

How much do you know about your customers’ lives and what makes them tick?  Are you out in the field talking to them and understanding their habits?  Do you watch their buying, service and support habits inside your database?  And most importantly, have you used that knowledge to define your operation, your processes, your goals and your staff?

Question 3: How Proactive Are You?

We have all invested a great deal of time in our businesses on IT recovery systems.  We know when our systems shut down, we have back up plans, we know who to call and when, and we have clear processes to put all this into play when the inevitable (sorry IT) happens.

Why don’t we have this same type of full blown recovery processes for saving customers in distress?

Most organizations know failures will occur from time to time.  But most companies don’t plan with rigor on how they will reach out to customers, how they will engage the organization to decide on a response, and how they will decide on the gestures and support for the frontline that interacts with customers in distress.  Southwest Airlines is an exception.  Every day they convene something called a “Morning Overview Meeting,” or a “MOM” meeting where they review every flight that went out the day before.  They know what flights were disrupted and by how much time and know which customers were impacted.  After the meeting a team called the “Proactive Customer Service Team” goes to work to reach out to these customers – before the customers reach out to Southwest.  Southwest Airlines earns the right to keep on flying profitably when other airlines falter because of this type of proactive decision making.  Over 70% of customers contacted through this process return – with additional passengers on the airline.

So how proactive are you? What would it take to become a proactive customer company?  Are you ready to engage cross-company operations to unite their view of the customer experience so that you can see how your customers are experiencing your company?  Can you align that information across your operation so you can make decisions based on knowing customers with repeat customer service calls, customers with disrupted services, or customers on the verge of leaving you?  Investing in this type of proactive service is often what is cited by the most loyal customers.  In fact research proves that if you make a mistake and correct it in a manner that honors your customer, you have a stronger relationship than if you had not made a mistake.

I had the pleasure of recently speaking on a webinar, where I discussed these five decisions.  If you’d like to hear that webinar, please go to www.informatica.com/customercentricity

Giving Back to the Customer’s Cause

CustomInk wouldn’t feel right printing T-shirts for a charitable organization without giving back to their cause. With this one gesture they let their customers know they back their efforts. What’s most important about this gesture is that CustomInk did not take this action as a marketing effort. It began as a personal expression by an order analyst who wanted to give back to companies who trusted CustomInk. In the end, like many other noble decisions, it returns to the sender. CustomInk’s genuine gesture to contribute to what their customers care about separates them from other T-shirt suppliers. It draws customers back to do business with a company that thinks this way.

Growing Business by Connecting with Customers 

CustomInk has delivered over 15 million shirts, with 98.9 percent of their customers saying they will purchase from them again. Though their donation to charity customers is small in amount (as little as $30), this gesture connects the company personally with what their customers care about. And it shows customers that their service is not just about getting and filling orders. With this gesture, CustomInk figuratively sticks their hand out of the shipping box and warmly embraces customers. And customers embrace CustomInk in return. Says one: “I definitely was not expecting an email asking if CustomInk could give a donation to our organization. This makes me proud to have picked this company to do our printing for us.” And as you can see from the increase in CustomInk’s growth in donations, charities are rewarding CustomInk because they care. The percent of CustomInk’s charitable donations is directly related to the growth rate they are experiencing in charities flocking to them.

- How do you connect in that personal manner with your customers?

- What selfless acts tell your customers and employees about what matters to you on a personal level? 

Want to learn about other tools to help you earn customers who drive the success and growth of your business? Pick up a copy of: “I Love You More Than My Dog: Five Decisions That Drive Extreme Customer Loyalty in Good Times and Bad.”

Differentiate with Service

In 1999, Netflix introduced what was then a landmark product when they began offering DVD rentals by mail. Prior to that, we all trudged to the video store for rentals. Netflix gave consumers an option to go online, make selections, read reviews, and get the DVDs for viewing via their mailboxes. Service and “delighting” customers has been the backbone of the company’s offering, and service has fueled their growth. As the market has changed, and Netflix’s easy delivery method has faced heavy competition from digital delivery services such as iTunes and the Comcast cable box, they continued to differentiate with service. So, when this glitch occurred, Netflix knew they needed to recover quickly, honestly, and in their own unique way to prove that they were worthy of having customers stick around.

Decide to Say Sorry

Netflix “End of Week” blog update after the shipping debacle posted the message. “Apologies to all once again and thanks for hanging in there with us.” A customer responded with: “Forget all those whiney haters. You guys did your best. You deserve praise for getting through it, not hatred for having some hiccups.” It’s estimated that Netflix’s recovery cost it $6 million. Because they communicated directly with customers, their decision and actions are being applauded and fueling their growth. Ninety-three percent of existing subscribers say they “talk up” how great Netflix is to everyone they know. How about you? Would you so readily fess up to an issue not all customers are even aware of?

Groupon’s recent (humble and honest) apology:

Recently, Andrew Mason, founder and CEO of Groupon, made his own apology. Known for his great sense of humor, Mason tucked his humor away for the moment and showed his serious side while apologizing in a video to his Japanese customers for an error made in a deal featuring a food delivery service. When too many “deals” were sold, the food company was unable to keep up with the volume, forcing them to deliver the meals late and in poor condition.

Rather than blame the food company, Mason acknowledged that it was Groupon’s error, and Groupon reimbursed customers and handed out vouchers for future use. Like Netflix, Groupon management could have sidestepped the issue, twisted the press and avoided much of the blame, especially considering Groupon is a rather new phenomenon (much like Netflix was a few years back) and people are fascinated with finding “deals” and probably willing to cut them some slack. But rather than hoping to slide under the wire on this recent food snafu—Groupon stepped up and owned the mistake. As Mason says in the video apology posted above, “We created Groupon to help enrich people’s lives by bringing new exciting experiences to them,” he said. “So when we do the opposite, as we have in this case, it really hurts.”

Do You Confess to Customers When Something Happens?

Netflix, the DVD-by-mail subscription service, let all customers know that they were experiencing a technology glitch holding up requested DVD shipments. They didn’t wait for customers to notice; they were proactive in admitting the error, apologizing for it, and making up for it.

- Do you openly explain to customers when something goes wrong?

- Do you wait for customers to complain or do you proactively offer a resolution for everyone?

- Which direction is the natural instinct inside your company?

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