Customer service that makes us memorable

In 1906, Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto created a mathematical formula to describe the unequal distribution of wealth in his country, observing that twenty percent of the people owned eighty percent of the wealth. In the late 1940s, Dr. Joseph M. Juran inaccurately attributed the 80/20 Rule to Pareto, calling it Pareto's Principle. Dr. Juran's observation of the "vital few and trivial many", the principle that 20 percent of something always are responsible for 80 percent of the results, became known as Pareto's Principle or the 80/20 Rule.

In 20th century corporate sales, gurus applied this to doing business where 80% of your business comes from repeat customers and 20% comes from new. Today, you could almost re-phrase it even further as 80% of your business comes through referrals from satisfied customers and 20% comes from off-the-shelf new customers. Whittling it all down, this means that truly satisfied customers are your greatest source for new business.

So when you have an online business and someone actually finds you in this morass of the Internet and becomes your customer, the big question is how do you turn this customer into a 'satisfied' customer who will refer your products and services to their friends and associates? The answer? You need to give them customer service that makes you memorable.

In a League of Extraordinary Salesmen class, we sales novices brainstormed this very question. Words were brought up, such as follow-up, ask them what they need, be punctual, answer their questions, smile and be friendly (difficult to do in an online environment), serve, create a partnership, give referrals to them, give details, find your commonality, send articles, be available, and communicate. What these all have in common is communication. You need to communicate with your customer.

Now I have to say that I'm thoroughly human and, looking for the Golden Fleece, have signed up to find out how to make money. Now these guys COMMUNICATE. I'm not sure how effective it is, but I'm deluged with emails: "I'm throwing you a lifeline!", "UNBELIEVABLE!!!!!!", "Exciting announcement of November Promotions", "Fall Asleep, Wake Up Rich!", "Some great stuff....", "Important (from my lawyer)", or even "I have THE survival kit you need!" And this is just a portion of my November's emails. The one thing all of these have in common is that they want to show you how to spend money to make money. Wow!

You must first capture your customer's attention. To do this, you have to separate your communications from the riff-raff. The best way is to have your communications be two way. 40% of successful selling today is building rapport with your prospect. So build rapport with your online customers. Following are some simple rules:

• Communicate, communicate, communicate.
• Always make your communications worthwhile.
• Share with them how you want to better serve them.
  
• Let them know how much you value them.
  
• Send professional looking emails.
  
• Apply the KISS principle (keep it simple stupid).
  
• Never ask for money.

In return, ask your customers to communicate with you by letting you know how they use your products and services. Ask them to tell you how you can improve your customer service to them. Make sure that, when they do reply, acknowledge their reply and state how valuable it is to you. Once you have built rapport with them, go ahead and ask them to help you by giving references by:

• Blogging about your product and services.
• Mentioning your products and services in their social media postings.
  
• Letting their friends know that they, too, can rely on you.