A happy customer brings back others

Recently a close associate accosted me asking why I wasn’t advertising aggressively to our current clients. Her idea was that I already had a ready audience with current clients. To her I could achieve two things by advertising aggressively to them; one they would take up more services than they are doing and two that understanding our services better would make them make informed referrals to their networks. Happy customer

While she had a point in that we should use our customers to advance the brand, she missed the point on the motivation for making customers them do so. Customers won’t advance your brand because you told them to do so; they talk about the brand because they love it. The point is therefore not to major on talking to clients about your brand, but on making them love your brand. And the way to make people love your brand is making their experience worthwhile. Word of mouth is the most powerful advertising tool. Customers talk about their experiences with brands, whether good, okay or bad.

A good experience at a bank makes me recommend the same to my spouse, child or friend looking for a bank service. An okay service will make me tempted to try another bank just to see if I can get better service. It is likely that I will talk about that experience to more than one person within my network.

A bad experience at a university will likely make me stop my child or sibling from choosing that university. Worse still people talk more about their bad experiences than the good ones. This might mean that one bad customer experience will be known to probably ten people. Think about the multiplicity of this if the ten people talk to another two or three. Happy customer 2 a customer talking to another Brands looking to grow their influence must therefore focus more on improving their customer experience. The more people receive good service the more they talk about you and the more the brand grows. You will realize that the value of good customer service is worth much more times than the millions you spend in advertising.

To grow your brand, start by growing your customer experience!

Every time I see an advert of a company that treated me badly, I switch channels but not before telling those around me of my experience.