Building Customer Loyalty – One Tweet at a Time

A co-worker of mine is a huge fan of the site Despair.com.  I hadn’t heard of them until she showed me the calendar she made on their site last year.  It’s absolutely hilarious and you have to check your pulse if you don’t find yourself cracking up when reading their “demotivators”.

 

Last week my co-worker made a comment on Twitter about how she loved the site and how she makes personal calendars on their site every year.  A few days later she received a cute print t-shirt but she had no idea from whom.  She got onto Twitter and mentioned it and it turns out that one of the marketing folks at Despair.com (@wailinglist) saw her tweet and sent her the t-shirt as a thank you for the shout out.  When she got her calendar in the mail yesterday they had also added a poster.

 

So what’s the point of this?

 

-          Use social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to find out what people are saying about you.

 

-          Be active when you see that you’re being talked about.  Thank those that say good things and fix the problems when people say bad things.  Great job @wailinglist! 

 

-          Word-of-mouth (WOM) has a huge impact on buyer perception.  If my co-worker had said something bad about Despair.com, it could have had a huge negative impact.  Now, there will be positive impact as I’m sure they’ve gained more followers.

 

Thanks to a savvy marketing person at Despair.com who uses social media to find out what customers are saying, not only is my co-worker thrilled that she got a free t-shirt and poster, but her loyalty to the company is as strong as ever and she’s telling others.

 

What did you do this week to make a customer loyal?

Social media and customer references

Today’s Marketing VOX newsletter has a very interesting article on the use of Social Media and how it relates to purchasers. Here’s a link to the article but in summary, the article states that social networking is dissolving the effectiveness of email Marketing.

According to JupiterResearch, “more than one-fifth (22 percent) of email users said they use social networking sites instead of email, with higher numbers indicating they have used instant messaging (IM), text messaging, and cell phones instead of email.”

But I run the customer reference program why would / should I care about Social Media? It comes down to word of mouth. Consumers aren’t spending as much time “listening” to email blasts from companies as they are on social networking sites and listening to their peers. This means that as a reference professional, you need to be aware of what your customers are saying about you / your company on these sites. Word of mouth is incredibly powerful (good and bad) so make sure you know who’s saying what about you!

The weight of bad word of mouth

We’ve all had some sort of negative experience with a company. Whether it be you were on hold for 30 minutes or the sales person gave you the wrong stuff or the dinner was cold. At some point in time we’ve all been let down. But at what point does it matter? If I have a bad dinner at the local restaurant will I go back? If a car continuously has problems will I buy that car? Based on the value you put on the transaction or interaction with a company determines the weight of bad word of mouth.

Take these two examples…

1 – About 13 years ago my dad had neck surgery. It was imperative that he have it so he took the recommendation of one (maybe even more) of his doctor’s and went with surgeon A. Pre-op was great and the surgery seemed to go well until a short time later when my dad realized that his neck was no better and he had an unbelievably disgusting looking scar on his neck. Even 13 years later he can’t hold his neck properly and often has pain.

2 – Monday I thought I’d be a good Samaritan and donate blood. I do this as often and I generally go to a location about 30 minutes north of here but on the weekends. Because it was going to be after work, I decided to try the newly remodeled location not far from where I work. I get in, fill out the paperwork and the nurse pulls me in to one of the offices to go over my medical history. She then pricks my left finger for a hemoglobin count. It was too low so she pricked the other hands same finger. This time it worked. I then cruised on over to the comfy chair to donate – me and my two middle fingers wrapped up in Band-Aids.

The next nurse comes over, tries to find my vein and calls over another nurse who’s “stealth” as she says, when it comes to finding veins. She finds it, pops the needle in, I say it stings, she moves the needle out a little bit (I guess it was in too much) and then I hear something to the effect of “oh no!” Apparently when she was taking the needle out a bit she bruised me. Not sure how she knew that already but that’s why she’s a nurse and I’m not. I look down and there’s blood coming out of the needle injection site. Hmmmmm. If the blood was going through the tubes for collection that would be one thing, but it was on my arm. Within a minute my arm had swollen up, it was sore and bruised. They immediately wrapped it up and iced it. After getting my permission they moved to the right arm and I was successfully able to donate blood.

So, would my dad recommend his neck doctor? Absolutely not. But, how many “don’t use this doctor” would it take to deter someone else from using him. Would I go back to the blood bank – I haven’t yet decided. Maybe both cases were rare accidents. Maybe both cases happen all the time. I don’t really know. But what I do know is that based on the “value” that’s put on the interaction/transaction will determine the importance and weight of the recommendation or non-recommendation.

How does this relate to the customer reference professional? Make sure you know the good and bad points of what the customer thinks of you and/or your company. It’s okay if there are some negative comments, but be aware of what they are so that you can counter act them if necessary.

BTW, Bay Area blood banks are critically low on “0″ type blood so donate if you can