I recently had a holiday in the Canary Islands and very nice it was too! Everyday, well almost everyday, we caught the free shuttle bus from the hotel down to the beach and village (a short 1.5km) to do what your average holiday maker does on holiday. What was interesting was that the bus driver (on his own accord) gave out small boiled sweets to all the passengers both going out and coming back! Small gesture but huge feel good feel factor. He didn’t need to do. His motivation, to make people feel welcome to his island and so he could engage in conversation!
This just proves that great customer service can be so very, very simple or should I say we need to keep it simple. It’s those things that make a huge difference and engender loyalty to your product, service and brand.
Intrinsically motivating your customer – making them feel good about the purchase, gaining their trust and respect, understanding their values, over delivering, saying thanks and appealing to them is far more powerful than extrinsically motivating them - giving them materialistic rewards such as money off vouchers and buy one get one free. It’s essentially making your only differentiating factor price which, of course, is not sustainable.
Provide customers with great service, a few simple, low cost great surprises along the way (the sweets) and ensure any customer retention strategy has gaining customer trust and respect at it’s core. That’s what customer service should be about. Perhaps a little more creative thought required but isn’t that the point?
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