Make sure your customers are getting the value and benefits they paid for.

You have customers that sign up for your service or pay for your product and then never use it again.

Isn’t this a waste of money? Yes, it is.

Why should you care about these customers? After all, they already paid you and you collected your money.

One key element of customer loyalty is that you actually care about your customers after the sale.

We’ve used Carbonite backup service for our desktop computer in the past. There was a period of time when we didn’t have our computer on for a while while we were on vacation.

During that time, Carbonite sent us an email letting us know that the software hadn’t been able to backup any data recently and wanted to make sure everything was still fine.

In our case it was but the idea behind the email deserves your attention.

Carbonite is a service that you have to renew. Just like Norton Anti-virus does a good job of detailing all the benefits you’ve received over the past year, Carbonite doesn’t want to you to miss out either.

Why? Because when it comes time to renew the service, the customer needs to have good memories of the benefits that have been delivered over the life of the product or service.

Your customers have paid good money for your product. Make sure they get what they paid for. Going the extra mile to remind customers of what they purchased will take you beyond just a transaction and into starting a solid relationship with your customers.

At one point or another, your customers will need to wait.

Your customers will wait before, during, and even after their transaction with you.

How you attend to the customer during these three stages will greatly impact their perception of you and their likelihood to purchase from you again.

On a recent family vacation, we went to Disneyland. This self-proclaimed “happiest place on Earth” delivers that promise exactly because they attend to the details at every stage of the waiting game.

Before

Every ride that you go on at Disneyland has an expected wait time posted as you enter the queue to stand in line.

Setting clear expectations with customers up-front reduces any ugly surprises from happening.

Disney crafts the waiting experience to wind you through entertaining landscapes, visuals, and builds up the story of the ride you are about to experience. So even though you are waiting, there is still an element of entertainment.

How can you engage, distract, or entertain the customer while they wait with your business?

During

Occasionally, rides at Disneyland stop midway through. When this happens, a recorded voice immediately announces that the ride is temporarily stopped and will resume shortly.

If there are delays in your transactions with customers, they will want to know what is going on. Immediately acknowledge the delay, and communicate when things will resume to normal.

After

Almost every Disney ride we went on finished by sending us through a gift shop that shared the theme of the ride we just finished.

After a customer has completed a transaction with you, it is a great time to upsell the customer on another product and to reinforce the experience they just had.

Total Waiting Experience

Your customers will have to wait before, during, and after transacting with you. If you enhance those interactions with customers by making the wait time less of a burden, you may very well make your business the “happiest place on Earth” for the moments they spend with you.

Consistency is the key to a great customer experience. If you start slipping up or forgetting things, your customers can only assume other problems are afoot as well.

On a recent vacation, the hotel we stayed at was consistently inconsistent. Everyday that the housekeeping crew cleaned our room, something different was forgotten.

One day, the trash was left in the room. The next day, no towels were left for us. This patterned continued during the length of our stay.

This poor service undermined our experience and solidified our decision to never stay there again.

Why is consistency so important?

Consistency assures your current customers of the experience they will have the next time they do business with you. If you did a good job this time, the customer will be more likely to do repeat business with you.

Consistency helps retain those customers that would otherwise turn to a competitor.

Consistency makes it extremely easy for your current customers to tell their friends about your business.

Being consistently bad doesn’t do you any good. If you consistently meet customer expectations, they will be satisfied.

If you consistently exceed customer expectations, you will delight customers and they will turn into loyal, raving fans.

Joker One: A Marine Platoon’s Story of Courage, Leadership, and Brotherhood is not a book about customer service or business. However, this book is full of insights into what makes a great leader and how, just like Marines in battle, your business will encounter a lot of surprises.

Joker One is the account of a Marine platoon that patrolled the Iraqi city of Ramadi in 2004. The story is told by the platoon’s leader, then Lieutenant Donnovan Campbell. It is a story of the brotherhood that forms in war and the love that these soldiers share.

Like the book 1776, Joker One contains stories that provide great parallels to how your business can succeed.

The frustrations, pain, suffering, surprises, successes, sacrifice, and leadership in Joker One are truly inspiring.

Turning these principles to business, they bring up many self-searching, evaluating questions:

• What kind of leadership do you have running your organization?
• How dedicated are your employees to your company and its goals despite the trials thereof?
• Do you plan meticulously only to have those plans fall apart when the realities of business hit?
• How do you measure success?
• Where do you draw the line between meeting a goal and the sacrifice it takes to do so?
• Your competition takes on many different forms and is around every corner. Do you know how to identify them?
• Can you rapidly adapt to a changing environment to meet both the needs of your employees and your customers?
• Do you train, keep learning, and continue growing to be ready for upcoming changes?

Should you read Joker One?

Buy the book – If you enjoy military history, Joker One is a touching and inspirational story that will both give you insights into the realities of this modern conflict and a great appreciation for the sacrifice these Marines made for others.

Like a parable, you will have to extract the principles and practices that will apply to your business.

Buy Joker One: A Marine Platoon’s Story of Courage, Leadership, and Brotherhood from Amazon.com.

If customers are searching for your company’s customer service, they need to find you and not a third party website.

One surprising source of visitors to this site is people who actually think that I am the official representative of the company they want to reach.

For example, I get lots of people searching for “huggies customer service” and they land on a post I wrote about my good experience with Huggies four years ago. Why do they find my site? Because, last I checked, I showed up first when you Google that search phrase.

Shouldn’t Huggies be number one? Absolutely.

I also get questions about DiGiorno pizzas. Why? Because I’ve written about DiGiorno in the past, too.

These examples highlight an area of concern that your business needs to worry about:

Your customers are looking for support and your customer service contacts. Can customers find you by searching for you on Google?

If they can’t, then you are invisible. Not only invisible, but vulnerable to what others are saying in your place.

You will be replaced by someone else, not at your company, that is blogging about you or talking about you in an online forum.

Your customers will not always be able to tell that a third party site they visit isn’t yours.

So today’s action item is to google your company name, and especially “your-company-name customer service.” Are you showing up in the results?

Your business needs to be where people are looking. Additionally, you need to be where customers are talking. Be sure to monitor customer word of mouth and stay on top of any issues that arise.