Get Your Customers to Fall in Love with You

February 10, 2007 | In Best Practices, Customer Service | 4 Comments

With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, it seems appropriate to talk about love. And before the pragmatists and anti-romantics among you click away for fear of encountering a sappy ode or sonnet, let me clarify that I’m talking about love of buyers for retailers and how you can encourage those “warm fuzzies” from your own customers.

But before I jump to that topic, let me first relate a short recent experience that illustrates this point. I recently placed a take-out order at a local chain restaurant. After taking my order, the manager said it would be about 10 minutes and proceeded to offer me a free drink. Now maybe this is commonplace at some local eateries, but this was a reasonably-sized franchise, and something I had yet to experience, or have seen since at other establishments. Turns out after I asked about this practice, the manager said they do this to keep customers happy while waiting. It’s important to note they didn’t miss out on a sale of a drink because I was done placing my order. My reaction though was one of surprise and a feeling of good will (important disclaimer here is I am a bit of a soda hound). So for the reasonably small cost of a cup and syrup and soda water, this merchant has earned some measure of loyalty from me.

So the obvious way you can apply this tactic is by slipping a “freebie” into your customer’s orders. Maybe you only do it the first time someone orders with you. Maybe you do it for the especially frequent shoppers. The exact process you will follow is up to you based on your knowledge of your typical customer profile (one-time shoppers vs. repeat buyers, etc . . .). You can view this freebie as analogous to a sample you may get in a real store—a chance to try a product with no obligation.

Obviously this notion of a sample only works for certain types of stores (drop me a line when you find the jewelry store with samples). For those stores, there are other things you can do to spread the love:

  • Process and ship orders with lightening speed; imagine your customer’s surprise when they get a timely shipment notification. This is an area where smaller merchants have a distinct advantage over larger merchants.
  • Hand-sign your packing slips with a thank you note. This tip comes from merchant/developer Rob Snell and he claims buyers have been delighted. A simple “thanks for your business” or “Happy to be your supplier for widgets” can go a long way.
  • If a customer adds comments to an order, send an email to them if you have any questions or simply confirming any special request. Buyers will appreciate the feedback.
  • Insert your idea here.

So submit your best customer love idea in the comment area below so all Yahoo! merchants can spread the love.

Paul Boisvert
Yahoo! Small Business

[Edit--02/09/07] Check the comments section for some more details around how to determine 1st time or repeat customer status.–PB

4 Comments »

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  1. Good idea. However, regarding your suggestions about giving freebies to 1st time customer, or identifying frequent buyers, does Yahoo store even has these features? Can you talk about things that are within the frame of what we can implement with our Yahoo store?

    Comment by Dominic — February 10, 2007 #

  2. Dominic,

    Hopefully all of the suggestions on the blog are implementable within Yahoo!–that’s the whole point of the blog. Specifically regarding 1st time buyers or repeat buyers there are ways to get this information to run a program such as this. The way you choose to do so would likely vary greatly depending on your store size, packing procedures, and the package you have.

    You can get 1st time buyer status a few ways. Orders from the same shopper will show a new line in the Order Manager when reviewing an order labeled “Order from same customer”. The field appears just above the Merchant Notes area. Don’t see the field on an order? It’s likely a first time buyer.

    Likewise if you wish to make a freebie part of a loyal customer reward program you can use the same field. You can also look at the report under the Statistics column labeled “Repeats”. This report ranks customers from most number of orders to fewest.

    Now both of these methods are geared more for smaller stores where the orders per day allows you to review each order and look for such info on the order. Larger stores would likely use a more automated custom solution that could be integrated as part of an external order management system. In such a system, customer order data could be checked against the store’s customer database and orders qualifying for first time or repeat status would be flagged and marked accordingly to change the pick list prior to packing.

    So this suggestion is certainly possible within the Yahoo! platform.

    Comment by Administrator — February 10, 2007 #

  3. i’ve actually seen at least a few jewelry stores include a freebie in their shipments. usually it’s not a super costly item worth only a few $, but i’m sure the customers really appreciated the gesture.

    Comment by jt — February 11, 2007 #

  4. [...] are but a few ways to make your clients fall in love with you. Put them in action and you’ll have raving fans who want to tell everyone they know about [...]

    Pingback by 7 Ways To Make Your Clients Fall In Love With You - Dawud Miracle @ dmiracle.com - (formerly Healthy WebDesign) — July 20, 2007 #

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