When you’re responsible for marketing and customer satisfaction, it’s really useful to keep an eye on what other businesses are doing. How are they communicating with customers and building relationships?

In this video I’ve got two examples for you, that would be really simple to adapt to use in your own business.

Transcript:

Hi and welcome to another episode of BaranovTV, designed to demystify the world of accounts and tax and to help your business grow.

This week I have come across two things that I wanted to share with you. They’re both actually very similar.

As a lot of you will know I love to swipe a good piece of marketing that I see or just moving through life really, because I think they could be really useful, just to apply to a different industry, a different business, and they make us think.

As I say this week, I came across two things, that were very, very similar, that would be really easy to deploy in most businesses that might just preempt a problem before it arises.

We all know in this day and age, the importance of good reviews.

• If you’re buying something online, we all look at reviews, to see what other people thought of them.
• If we’re going somewhere, if we’re traveling, do you remember those days, you actually go to things like, Trip Advisor and before we get in a tradesman to do some work we look at Checkatrade and see how they’re rated.

Reviews are key and a bad review can really do a lot of damage.

So the thing that I’ve seen from two people, goes a long way to preempt that bad review. So the first one I placed an order with Weird Fish online over the weekend, and I had an email through from their Managing Director.

Now I’m not daft; I know that this is automatically generated. However, it reads really nicely.

It says:

“Hello, Liz, thank you for placing your first order on our website. I’d like to welcome you to the Weird Shoal.

Every customer is important to us. If you have any questions about your order or something slips through our net, and you’re not happy, please let myself or our customer service team know and we’ll get to work to put things right.”

So far. So good. You’ve got a couple of little puns in there playing on their logo of the fish. But the thing that I liked it says:

”To contact me, just reply to this email, or contact our customer service team on [a telephone number’] or by emailing. And then there’s an email address, to speak to customer services.

Of course, the team and I here at Weird Fish Head Office love chatting to our customers and hearing positive feedback. If you’re happy with your order. Always feel welcome to let us know and spreading the word, about Weird Fish to your family and friends really helps us out.

So if you had a great experience and love your new items, I’d be extremely grateful for your kind words.

I hope you’ve caught a new favorite. You’re sincerely John Stockton, Managing Director.

So what has he done?

• He’s been friendly.
• It’s a nice tone.
• It’s nicely pitched. He said, this is what you can do.
• If there’s anything wrong when your order comes through, he’s given me different ways of contacting. So three different options to go back to them.
• And then he said obviously, we’re hopeful that everything will be fine. And if it is, please again let us know because he’s trying to get that feedback.
• And he’s trying to get their communication, from his customers, which is brilliant.

So I was really impressed with that. And I thought that’s actually something that would be quite easy, to build into our own processes and our own communications for whatever business we’re in, to actually try and get that information from customers.

And the other one is even clearer, about trying to preempt those bad reviews.

I can’t remember who the company was. It’s one that Chris gave me, something he’d ordered online.

It’s just this little card, which I’ll take a photo of and attach to the end of the video, but it says,

‘Give us a chance.. Occasionally things don’t go quite to plan. Often the first time we hear about it, is after reading a customer’s review. We’d appreciate the opportunity to resolve any issues before leaving a review, simply contact our dedicated customer happiness team, by visiting… [a particular page on their website]. You may well be surprised how much our small family business, really does care.’

And again, it’s a nice, easy way of contacting them.

• It’s very clear what they want you to do.
• And they’re saying your hands up, we’re human, but it’s nicely worded, and it just hopefully makes it easier to get in touch.
• And this was just with the goods that Chris had ordered.

So both as I say, to start off with very similar, relatively easy to do, and just far easier to preemptively solve a problem, before it actually goes perhaps onto social media or a review site, whatever it is, just by making it really easy for customers to get back in touch if something doesn’t quite go according to plan.

So I will put copies of both of these screenshots, at the end of the video, because I appreciate I’ve rattled through them.

If you see anything that strikes you as really good marketing or a really good idea, please do bounce them back to me. As I say, I love to equip my swipe file and obviously share some things with you guys, if they’re of interest.

So please do head them my way.

Otherwise I’ll see you all very soon.