5 Ways To Create An Inspiring Customer Experience

Whenever I hear someone rave about a company, in the back of my head I think, hey, I’d like people to talk that way about my work. How can I do it?

I figured you’d want to know how to build that kind of inspiring business too. To learn how to do that, I recorded this program with Jim Champy, author of Inspire!

Jim Champy

Jim Champy

Inspire!

Jim Champy is the author of Inspire! and Chairman of Consulting, Perot Systems. He is recognized throughout the world for his work on leadership and management issues and on organizational change and business reengineering.

 

5 ways to inspire

1. Have a bigger mission

Stonyfield Farms, the spunky organic yogurt manufacturer, knows how passionately their customers care about the environment, so many of its campaigns promote the environment more than their yogurt.

In one, the Stonyfield crew held a big “We Support Inflation” sign at an intersection and offered to inflate drivers’ tires. They explained that, if every car’s tires were properly inflated, our national fuel efficiency would increase by 2 miles per gallon.

2. Simplify your offer

Zipcar, which rents cars by the hour, used to charge $4 per hour plus 45 cents per mile. People would use their car for 3 hours, expecting a $12 bill and would end up with sticker shock when they were charged $35.

They won over their customers by creating dead-simple hourly pricing and telling customers that they’d only be charged per mile if they exceeded 180 miles per day.

3. Be accessible to customers

When Bob Parsons looked at domain name registration companies, he wasn’t impressed. “Service was horrific,” he says. So he made the customer service at his company, Go Daddy, accessible and helpful. He put his customer service center’s phone number on his homepage and, to keep customers from bouncing from department to department, he trained his people to handle any problem or customer inquiry – whether it’s related to billing, design, repair, or anything in between.

[Andrew’s note: I called Go Daddy’s customer service number and made sure this claim is true before publishing it. But I didn’t record it the way I did in my interview with Tony of Zappos.]

4. Be authentic (even when it hurts)

Honest Tea created a drink called “Zero,” a name meant to dramatize that it contained 0 calories. But before launching, when their labels were literally in the printer’s shop, the company discovered that their drink actually had 3.5 calories per bottle.

US government regulations say anything under 5 calories can be rounded down to 0 in the labeling, but that wasn’t good enough for Honest Tea. To be true to the relationship they had with their customers, they pulled the drink.

5. Alienate some people

When asked about his company’s edgy commercials, Bob Parsons says, “I’m very ready to alienate 10 to 15 percent of viewers to really get the attention of 85 to 90 percent.” Taking a stand and inspiring some customers can mean alienating others.

Similarly, Stonyfield risks alienating potential customers who disagree with its politics. And Honest Tea’s refusal to sweeten its teas the way Snapple does means some customers won’t even consider buying it. But to the right customers, the stands these companies take are inspiring.

Full program includes

– The difference between missionary and mercenary businesspeople.

– More examples of how great companies inspire.

– What you can do to inspire your customers.

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