5 Simple Ways to Wow Your Customer

By On January 20, 2017
As I’ve written about before, the best way to generate word-of-mouth marketing (aka, FREE marketing) is to consistently exceed your customers’ expectations. To be clear, for this to work, you have to be consistently MEETING expectations. This doesn’t work if your bar is so low that exceeding expectations is just showing up for a service call or being open when you say you’re going to be! But that said, it doesn’t have to be complicated. Here are five simple ways you can wow your customer with little impact to your day-to-day operations.

1. Respond to Everyone
Whether you’re a solo-preneuer or you’ve got a team working for you, make it a priority to contact every customer that attempts to contact you. I recently had a landscaping need, and out of three possible options, only one of them actually contacted me back…at ALL. Guess who I ended up working with? Not only do your odds of earning business go way up by responding…but in today’s world, the bar is pretty low, so yes, it is actually possible to wow somebody just by speaking with them or replying to an inquiry. If you don’t have time or staff, you can actually automate it. The return on that investment would cover itself multiple times over.

2. Take Care of the Kids
If you serve customers in an environment where children may be present, you’ve got a huge opportunity to wow them by providing some kid-friendly activities or swag that can keep them occupied or entertained. Set up a video game, a dollhouse, a stack of books or some legos. Keep some juice pouches in a mini-fridge and offer them along with some Goldfish crackers. Every mom you serve will be posting your praises on Facebook.

3. Free Food
Food works for all ages. Provide some healthy options as well as some old favorites. Take it a step further by having some vintage-style snacks and beverages to appeal to the inner-youth of your customer or something unique or local to stand out and make your business more memorable. One local restaurant we visit as a family gives customers a unique fruit-chew candy with the bill that I have never seen anywhere else. Not only are they delicious, but the kids love them, too. (See #2)

4. Follow up
While item #1 (Respond to Everyone) is geared to potential customers and prospects, this one is more about following-up post-transaction. Check in with your customer. How are they feeling about the service you provided? Is there anything else you can do for them? Be sincere and honest in your follow-up with the intent to follow-through if you have to. Most businesses skip this step, and that’s a big miss.

5. Unadvertised specials
It’s hard to top a big discount or special offer that someone didn’t know they were going to get. Sense that your customer has had a bad day or is dealing with some extra stress? Or maybe a loyal customer you haven’t seen in a while…or someone referred by a loyal customer? Surprise them with a special deal that they didn’t know was coming their way.

There are hundreds more simple ideas like this—and I’ll share more in the future—so let your imagination run wild. Get your team together to brainstorm ideas specific to your business and your customer. Ultimately, your goal should to be to make that kind of thinking the norm…where you and your team start to think automatically about ways to wow your customers in a more frequent, authentic and helpful way, which in turn creates raving fans who return often, spend more and can’t help telling others about your business.