Your company, product, and service should be so good that you don’t need to advertise. Is that even possible? Yes, it is.

As you read the other day, we dropped our old pest control service Terminix and needed to find a new provider. At this stage of customer acquisition, your company’s marketing would hopefully take over and persuade a customer to choose you.

Word of Mouth

We, like many people, skipped the ad-ridden landscape and asked several of our friends for recommendations. We got a few passionate reviews and some that were just so-so.

One of our friend’s recommendations was:

I would hands down recommend Pflugerville Pest Control. The prices are reasonable and the owner doesn’t advertise because he gets so much work via word of mouth referrals.

This is a great example of what you want your customers to be saying about you!

Personal Service

I called the owner and spoke with him for about fifteen minutes. He took the time to explain their services and answered my questions in detail. I learned more about the pests around my house during that brief call than during the entire four years we had Terminix servicing our house.

Break the Rules

This small business seems to defy traditional logic:

• It has no website
• It’s trucks are not artistically painted
• It doesn’t advertise

Those business practices may seem restrictive, however, this small business is succeeding because of several key factors:

1. word of mouth referrals instead of advertising
2. pricing at 75% of the big boys
3. personable service

Their service is their marketing, that in turn, spawns numerous word of mouth referrals.

What can your company learn from the small, yet successful, Pflugerville Pest Control?

Do you fight your customers when they want to leave?

My wife and I recently decided to change our pest control service. We had seen a deterioration in the quality of customer service and the prevention of unwanted pests.

I called up Terminix to cancel our account and they offered a great case study in how not to treat departing customers:

Tell the Customer He’s a Liar

I told the woman that answered the phone that the technician wasn’t giving the great customer service we had with the smaller Safeguard company that used to service our home. Once Terminix bought them out, we started to see a slide in quality. The Terminix person informed me that we had “the same tech you had with Safeguard.”

So I’m wrong? Questioning a customer’s perception of reality will surely send you down a slippery slope.

The representative asked me several questions, trying half-heartedly to get me to stay. When I persisted, I got transfered to what must have been the corporate offices.

Don’t Assume Customer Loyalty

The corporate person tried to persuade me, once again to stay. “You’ve been with us for four years,” she stated.

Just because customers are with you for a long time doesn’t mean they will stay forever. You have to continually earn their business. Don’t take that for granted.

Push the Customer to the Point of Frustration

The Terminix rep asked, “What is your pest problem?” I said, “My pest problem today is that I want to cancel my pest control service.” I was getting frustrated and this seemed to end the conversation.

Happy Ending

Customers will remember their last interactions with you. Some customers won’t be yours forever. When the time comes to part ways, make it easy for your customers to leave.

If you were able to glean why a customer is leaving, take that information back and see if you can improve your product or service.

My beautiful wife recently bought me a Nintendo Wii for my birthday. In an effort to try some new video games, I subscribed to GameFly, a web-based game rental service, that Beth mentioned in her comments about Netflix and setting delivery expectations.

As my first month drew to a close, I realized I was too busy to play games enough to justify the monthly cost. I went through GameFly’s online cancellation process and was presented with this form:

While this was an obstacle on my way to cancellation, I thought they handled it gracefully by following a few key principles:

1. They tell me why they are asking for this information. “Oh, it is to help other customers.”
2. The options are clear and easy to understand
3. If I didn’t find a reason, I could always just type in a comment

When asking these types of questions, try to keep your list of options short and concise. Customers should be able to quickly find the relevant option and move on.

From the business side, GameFly is able to collect some good information on how they could improve their service. Of course, not all customers will answer the questions but it is a good way to keep a pulse on why customers do what they do.

Knowing what products you have available for sale is not only good inventory management but good customer service.

Last week I stopped by Best Buy to buy the video game Mario Cart for the new Wii my wife got me for my birthday. While in the video game section, a Best Buy employee approached and asked what I was looking for.

He told me they didn’t have any of the game I was looking for in stock. After all, they are very popular right now. However, some would be arriving in a shipment the next day.

In this brief interaction with the Best Buy employee, he quickly explained the situation and answered my questions before I even asked them.

When customers ask about an out-of-stock or low-stock item, you need to convey three things:

1. What is the current inventory level?
2. Why is there nothing in stock?
3. When will you have more in stock?

I returned to Best Buy a few days later and found the game in stock and made the purchase. Some customers will follow this pattern, but others will need to be actively pulled back to your store.

In addition to knowing when you’ll have more product in stock, you could create a notification or waiting list that the customer could join. This will give you some very qualified sales leads that should be easily converted to purchases.