One surprising source of visitors to this site is people who actually think that I am the official representative of the company they want to reach.

For example, I get lots of people searching for “huggies customer service” and they land on a post I wrote about my good experience with Huggies four years ago. Why do they find my site? Because, last I checked, I showed up first when you Google that search phrase.

Shouldn’t Huggies be number one? Absolutely.

I also get questions about DiGiorno pizzas. Why? Because I’ve written about DiGiorno in the past, too.

These examples highlight an area of concern that your business needs to worry about:

Your customers are looking for support and your customer service contacts. Can customers find you by searching for you on Google?

If they can’t, then you are invisible. Not only invisible, but vulnerable to what others are saying in your place.

You will be replaced by someone else, not at your company, that is blogging about you or talking about you in an online forum.

Your customers will not always be able to tell that a third party site they visit isn’t yours.

So today’s action item is to google your company name, and especially “your-company-name customer service.” Are you showing up in the results?

Your business needs to be where people are looking. Additionally, you need to be where customers are talking. Be sure to monitor customer word of mouth and stay on top of any issues that arise.

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To be successful in selling to customers, you need to transport the customer from their current state of mind to an understanding of what you are selling. You need to speak the same language as the customer.

My wife and I recently ventured into a local Mexican restaurant, Tio Dan’s Puffy Tacos. We’d never been to this restaurant before and aside from the name of the place, which clearly told us what their specialty was, we didn’t know anything about it.

Tio Dan’s menu was a full color, laminated, self-proclaimed “food book” that had pictures of every single entree they serve. These weren’t fake marketing pictures; they were real pictures of actual food they had prepared.

By looking at the menu, you got a good sense of what you’d be eating. You didn’t have to guess what a particular dish was based on an unfamiliar name because what you saw is what you’d get.

Tio Dan understands that not every customer that comes through his door knows what he sells or what the items on his menu are. He helps overcome that hurdle by showing customers what they can buy in terms they can understand.

How can you help your customers better understand your product or service? Perhaps you can show them the end result (a picture of food in our example). Or use an mental anchor that connects what you offer to something the customer already understands.

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Here is a tale of two restaurant servers. One earned a nice tip, the other lost it.

A week ago, my team at work and I went to Macaroni Grill for lunch. The waiter, Luigi (yes, that was his real name, he proudly informed us), was the best waiter I’ve had in a long time. He was very courteous, attentive, and treated each of us with respect.

As we ordered our meal, we told Luigi that we’d all be on separate checks. His sincere response was, “Thank you for telling me, I really appreciate that.”

I thought this was nice but didn’t think much more about it until we had an opposite experience a week later.

To celebrate the upcoming wedding of a co-worker, a large group of us (about 18) went to lunch at the Kona Grill. We made reservations ahead of time so they were very aware that we were coming. Our server took care of our minimum needs but nothing more. When it was time for the check, we asked if she could do separate checks. She indicated that would be too difficult and left the whole check with us to divide up.

Our group spent the next 15 minutes passing the check around, scrounging up cash and writing notes with credit cards of how much to charge on each.

After the check had gone around, we counted up the money to realize that our server was not going to be getting a good tip. Everyone had paid for their lunch and indicated they tipped but the total amount of cash didn’t constitute a nice tip on top of that.

If the server had done separate checks or in some way facilitated our payment, each person would have likely given the appropriate tip that was somehow lost in the anonymity of a group check.

A little extra work from this server would have dramatically improved her earnings for that lunch hour. Instead, she took the easy route and was probably wondering why the stingy tip.

Contrast this with our friend Luigi, who took our needs into account and earned himself a nice tip.

When you are serving your customers, you have a choice: Do the bare minimum or go the extra mile. The extra mile is never easier but it is full of rewards and happy customers.

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Be careful if you find yourself falling into this over-generalization trap.

Just because customers look the same, doesn’t mean they are the same.

Customers may look alike because of numerous reasons. For example, different customers may have similar:

• buying patterns
• product preferences
• technical support issues
• product return habits
• purchase methods (credit card, cash, etc.)
• deadlines
• warranty needs

My wife and I have identical twin daughters. (Yes, being a dad of twins is an adventure.) But even though our daughters look alike doesn’t mean they are the same person. Each has her own personality and mannerisms that make her unique.

These differences show up in how each daughter reacts to her environment, her needs, and even how she expresses herself.

Your customers can often be like identical twins. When you serve enough customers, some of them start to look just like the last one you served.

Before you jump to conclusions on the type of customer you have in front of you, make sure you have enough data points to confirm your classification before you proceed. Customers are often annoyed when you jump into a solution or sales pitch for something that doesn’t apply to them!

Identify the basic needs certain classes of customers have. If you can guarantee you’ve got a customer that fits that mold, by all means pull out the standard response as a starting place for servicing their needs.

If you aren’t sure what type of customer you have, ask questions.

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Should you try and upsell them a higher priced product? Or cross-sell them an additional product?

Absolutely.

We recently needed to get our roof replaced. The contractor provided us with an estimate that included the basics and then threw in three line items of extras.

Upsell is More Than Price

These extra upsells had no accompanying explanations other than their name and price.

To us, that just looked like several extra hundred dollars. Why would we want to spend that?

When I called up the contractor’s office, they explained the purpose of two of the three items. We were convinced of their necessity and agreed to those upsells.

The first thing a customer will see with an upsell is the price. Help them get past that point or you’ll never make the sale.

Benefits of the Upsell

On a subsequent phone call, I spoke with the owner of the roofing company. In a matter of minutes he convinced me to buy the upgraded shingles for my roof. He highlighted the benefits of the product: higher quality, longer lifespan and contrasted that with the cheaper shingles I had originally selected.

Personal Discount

To incentivize me even further, he discounted the original upsell price in half because of several personalized reasons why I could qualify: we live close to their shop, my paperwork is in order, etc.

In the end we walked away with a new roof with all the upsells that were originally on the proposal.

Tell Me Why

The keys to the upsell were not just in the product listing but in the why behind it.

Remember these steps in your upselling efforts to your customers:

• Explain why their life will be better with the more expensive option
• Outline how the cheaper option will actually cost them more money in the long run
• Describe the consequences of the cheaper product and even the odds that they will occur
• Give the customer an “insider” feel by customizing and personalizing your discount to them (even if you give it to everyone)

Upselling a product to a customer that is already purchasing will greatly help grow your revenues and profits. Keep your selling process personal and helpful and your customers will choose the upsells and upgrades you offer.

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When customers don’t have a coupon code, it causes them to pause. “Why don’t I have a coupon code? Am I missing something? Who are these special customers that get coupons when I don’t?”

All these questions are raging in the heads of your customer and they create an unsettled state of mind. At this point your customers may do one of these things:

• proceed to checkout because they just don’t care about price
• proceed to checkout anyway, but just a little more displeased than before
• leave your site and go somewhere they know they can get a discount
• go search for coupon codes and return and use one they found via Google

Many of these outcomes mean you sell your product and get paid. But at what cost?

Some of these results mean you get paid less than you were originally going to get (and what the customer was even willing to pay) before you provided the confusion of a coupon code box.

The Get Elastic e-commerce blog also points out that when people search for coupon codes online, the resulting sites often sneak in an affiliate link so you not only lose the price of the coupon but you have to pay out a commission that wasn’t necessary.

To counter this, the Get Elastic folks recommend using custom URLs that don’t require people to enter coupon codes or that selectively show the coupon code box. The discount shows up when appropriate and doesn’t confuse people when not applicable.

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Many customers will shop based on price or feature comparing your product to your competitor’s offering.

Other times your customer is only comparing what they currently have with what you are selling.

Let’s look at an example.

A while ago, I mentioned that we had an old TV that needed a converter box to receive the new digital TV signals. Ironically, that same TV started sparking and smoking about a week after we bought the converter box.

With the television dead, it was time to search for a replacement. Because our current TV was so old (over 9 years), any current television on the market looked really good.

Since my point of reference was based on a out-of-date experience, any new television would probably work as long as it fit in our cabinet.

When customers come to your store with this mindset, you need to work overtime to convince them to buy that fancy, huge, feature-rich, and pricey system you want to sell.

Not all people care about the top-of-the-line version of your product. If you want any chance of upselling the customer, take a step back and explain the basics and benefits of what you are selling and why they’d need it.

Customers will compare the products you sell side by side. If you can’t differentiate between them in words and benefits the customer cares about, they will either walk away with nothing or buy based on price.

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The concepts and principles that Claude C. Hopkins teaches in his Scientific Advertising are so relevant and timeless that you’d think they were written this year. In fact, Hopkins penned his book at the beginning of the 20th century.

The only thing out of date in this book are the dollar amounts he mentions in his examples. Of course there was no Internet back in Hopkins’ day, so his advertising examples are based primarily on direct mailings.

Hopkins covers the vital importance of testing everything you do. What is working? What do customers prefer? You’ll never know until you test.

The author also reminds us that we need to track the results of our advertising and campaigns. Shotgun blast broad mass media isn’t effective. We need to target our specific customer by only serving our message up to them and writing the headline and ad such that it speaks to them alone.

His chapter on samples was very interesting to me. After I read his book, my eyes have been opened to all the companies around that are wasting money on ineffectual giveaways and promotions.

A lot of what Hopkins teaches may sound familiar. It should! His work is the basis for most modern advertising and marketing. If you take his book and apply the principles therein, you can save a lot of money by not having to buy the latest and greatest from marketing gurus.

Should You Read Scientific Advertising?

Buy the book - If you are involved in any way in crafting the copy writing of advertisements or anything that a customer will see, you need to read Claude Hopkins’ Scientific Advertising. It will establish a firm foundation and mindset for effectively using your ads and even business practices to get the best return on investment possible.

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When there is a void of information, customers start to fear something may be wrong.

After a recent purchase from Costco’s website, I received a series of email updates on my order:

1. order was received
2. order was sent to fulfillment
3. order was shipped
4. order was delivered

The consistent status updates of my purchase never gave me pause or reason to worry.

When a customer orders from your website, do they immediately receive an email confirmation that the order was received? What happens after that?

When your email notifications aren’t in sync with the real world, customers are either left in the dark or wonder why they should trust your system again.

We ordered a replacement part for our dishwasher from the Sears website. The order went fine and the part arrived as ordered. However, a week later I got an email saying that my order had shipped. A week after I got it!

Trust is hard to gain and easy to lose. Keeping your customers in the loop on their order process helps set delivery expectations and bridge the shipping gap that exists in e-commerce orders.

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I always find it interesting to review the data on how people find their way to this site.

Top 5 Most Read Posts

These posts were the most visted this past year:

1. 10 Tricks Customers Hate and 10 Treats They Love
2. Proactive Customer Service
3. Four Customer Expectations
4. 5 Ways to Better Treat Your Customers
5. Show Empathy to Customers

Top 5 Referrers

These great sites have sent the most people to Return Customer than any other non-search site over the past year:

1. 9rules - I’m a member of 9rules’ business community
2. Aweber blog - valuable information for any online marketer
3. Smiley Cat - Return Customer is featured in the Typography for Headlines gallery
4. Donor Power Blog - Jeff Brooks’ great non-profit blog
5. Marketing Profs Daily Fix - get your daily fill of marketing tips and news

Top 5 Searches

The following searches (linked to their respective posts) brought the most people to this site last year:

1. proactive customer service
2. customer expectations
3. return customers
4. how to treat customers
5. huggies customer service

If you have any comments on things you like or that could be improved with Return Customer, please leave a comment, send me an email, or follow me on Twitter.

I look forward to a big 5 year celebration next year!

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