The last post explained how your pervasive internal questions produce a lens through which you evaluate information and make decisions. If you’re a marketer, you have certain marketing questions posed in mind. What driving questions do you need to consistently ask in order to determine how best to proceed?
At our company (Cult Branding), we believe we have developed the ultimate business lens to help businesses make effective decisions that lead to long-term profitability.
Peter Drucker reminded us that “the purpose of business is to create a customer.” Thank you, Mr. Drucker. Very true.
But you also know that all customers are not created equal. Some customers are more loyal, and therefore, more profitable. If you serve your loyal customers better than anyone else, they’ll provide your business with a fortified foundation as well as help you create new customers through word of mouth.
Do you realize how important the lens of your best customers—your Brand Lovers—can be? Do you know who your Brand Lovers are?
Here’s our latest deck to help illustrate the importance of your best customers:
People “get” what you’re feeling—consciously or not. If you don’t really care about your customers, they’ll be the first ones to know.
Great brands don’t just create meaningless slogans like “Customer Service Excellence”—they champion customer-centric values as a way of operating every aspect of their business.
These businesses excite us and make us happy to conduct business with them. It’s a symbiotic relationship between business and customer. The business provides products and services customers need and, in turn, the customers willingly patronize the business and support its existence.
Have many companies forgotten about the nature of business itself?
Outstanding businesses go above and beyond to better their customers’ lives:
L.L. Bean wants you to be completely satisfied with your purchase. Don’t like the way a shirt holds up after a few years of use? Return it—L.L. Bean has no time limit on customer satisfaction.
Online retailer Zappos offers free shipping both ways and a 365-day return policy.
Along with one-click shopping, Amazon offers a Prime program that gives customers free 2-day shipping on most items and their Subscribe and Save feature offers both convenient and economical shopping.
In addition to creating beautifully-designed products, Apple supports their Mac User Groups (MUGs) and Genius Bar to help educate their customers on how to better use their Apple products.
Harley-Davidson sponsors HOG groups around the world and annual mega-rally events.
Search and online advertising giant Google offers a robust offering of free services that help their customers in their daily lives from Google Reader, Google-411, Desktop Search, Google Earth, News Alerts, Google Calendar and Google Docs.
What does your business do to better serve its customers?
“My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.”
- His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama
Apparently, kindness is also the religion of online retailer Zappos.com.
Companies that uphold Cult-Brand values expect the best from their employees, because as humans, they have the intrinsic capacity to feel, contribute, and most of all, love.
At Zappos, Thursday is Random Acts of Kindness Day. Every week, three people are randomly selected to be the recipient of his or her own hit parade, complete with noisemakers, bullhorns, a royal banner and crown to be donned for the entire week.
Kindness also spreads throughout the corridors of Zappos through song. Take a listen to the Zappettes, Zappos’s female singing sensation, uplifting co-workers’ spirits in three-part harmony.
And when employees are inspired to spread kindness among each other, customers will be touched with the same.
1999: Selection (of shoes)
2003: Customer Service
2005: Culture and Core Values as their Platform
2007: Personal Emotional Connection
2009: Delivering Happiness
Several key take-aways for smart business people:
A strong brand is constantly evolving, but not changing directions. This is critical. You probably don’t want or need to re-invent your brand, but you also can’t be stagnant. (It’s also interesting to see how a brand’s logo can evolve over time.)
Strong brands tend to move up Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs. Zappos continues to move in a more humanistic direction. They’ve always been about people, but now they are moving upward to a more meaningful connection with their customers and employees. Delivering happiness is a tall order, but simply holding that intention will create new opportunities to wow their customers and employees and lead to greater loyalty.
For anyone interested in the power of brand loyalty and how to build a business for the long-term, Zappos is an ideal company to study. Zappos demonstrates that many of the intangible qualities of business like values, culture and willingness are more important than many transactional-oriented executives care to believe. Otherwise, why would anyone care about a shoe e-tailer? And how could they grow by approximately 7,800% annually for the last nine years?
Can you imagine a day at the office where you might be asked to shave the head of your co-worker? Or better yet, how about taking a razor to the mane of your CEO? Leave it to the folks at Zappos to create not just a day, but an annual event called the Bald & Blue Head Shaving Day.
Social grooming is a means through which animals, including humans, who live in proximity can bond, build and reinforce social relationships. CEO Tony Hsieh explained that what originally started out as a dare evolved into a fun team building activity. Now every year, Zapponians line up and get groomed, all in the name of team spirit.
The benefits? Research has shown that social grooming is positively associated with relationship satisfaction and trust. For Zappos, relationships built on trust are the bedrock of their organization.
Watch this short clip on social grooming, the Zappos way.
Jobs are everywhere. We clock in and clock out, putting in the bare minimum just to get the work done. Sometimes though, we find a career where we have a deeper vested interest in our work, motivated by achievement and advancement. Yet if we’re lucky, we’ll eventually find our calling where work becomes our life mission, and our life mission becomes work.
Online retailer Zappos is on a mission to inspire their family of employees to a higher calling. Since the beginning, they weren’t satisfied hiring people just looking for a job to pay the bills. Under their visionary leader Tony Hsieh, the company made a bold organizational move in 1994, relocating their headquarters from San Francisco to Las Vegas, to align themselves with people looking for a career.
Hsieh wrote in Inc. Magazine, “We were having a hard time finding good customer service people in San Francisco. Las Vegas has a lot of call centers and lots of people who want to do customer service as a career.”
Zappos embraces a singular vision—to provide the best customer service—and attracts people who share this passion. But the folks at Zappos aren’t satisfied knowing that their employees are committed to a career in customer service. They constantly strive to inspire their employees to find their true calling—to find personal meaning in their work guided by a higher purpose.
To achieve this, Zappos employs a full-time on-site personal coach, Dr. Vik, who invites employees to take a seat on the royal “throne” for a one-on-one consultation. He regularly tells his guests, “You are worth a billion dollars. Come have a seat and take your life to the next level!” With Dr. Vik’s guidance, employees are empowered to reach their full potential across their work and personal lives.
How many companies employ a full-time personal coach? Most businesses would view this as an unnecessary expense and immediately reject the idea.
Yet Zappos understands that a company’s employees—their people—are a reflection of the brand itself. When employees find their true calling, work is greatly satisfying and meaningful. Their enthusiasm and passion is infectious. And the customers are first to take notice.
Businesses aggressively strive to establish trust with their customers, but oftentimes neglect the need to cultivate trust in their own workplaces. Economist John Helliwell researched the determinants of workplace happiness, and found that trust is the greatest contributor, beating out pay, workload, or perks. A one-point increase on the trust scale can mean the equivalent of the psychological benefits associated with a 40% wage increase.
Online retailer Zappos embraces trust as an essential ingredient in cultivating an enthusiastic and happy workplace. Zappos made its inaugural debut at #23 on Fortune Magazine’s List of “100 Best Companies to Work for,” making them the highest-ranking initiate for 2009. For Zappos, trust is a core business value, established through a steadfast commitment to transparency.
Here are 5 ways that Zappos champions trust within their organization:
The Culture Book: Zappos publishes an annual book, a compilation of employees’ thoughts and reflections on the Zappos culture. Every submission is included and edited only for spelling and typos. The book is given to potential hires for an unfiltered look into the Zappos culture, inclusive of the good, the bad, and the beautiful.
The “Ask Anything” Newsletter: Employees can literally ask anything about the company, even and especially about financials. Answers are compiled and published in a monthly newsletter.
Extranet for Vendors: Vendors can log in and view insider data such as inventories and sales. When asked if Zappos worries whether the information will get into the hands of competitors, CEO Tony Hsieh is not concerned. He is confident that the benefits outweigh the risks, by providing vendors a critical window into their business, promoting a sense of control, and above all else, building relationships based on trust.
Company Tours–Come One, Come All: Zappos has an open door policy and offers everyone a tour of their company headquarters. When reporters visit the headquarters, there’s no official algorithm that dictates who they can speak to and who they cannot. When you have nothing to hide, every employee is authorized to speak to his or her own experience.
Twitter: Zappos actively encourages its employees to join Twitter, and in fact, offers Twitter class as part of their employee orientation. With over 400 employees tweeting, Zappos policy is more of a non-policy: “Be real and use your best judgment.” Hsieh understands the power of Twitter, not just as a way to cultivate transparency, but also to empower employees and strengthen ties within the organization. Hsieh tweeted: “Twittering is like hugging. Just because it’s hard to measure the return on investment doesn’t mean there isn’t value there.”
When employees feel trusted, they tend to be happier. The pay off for companies? Greater productivity and less turnover. And when employees are satisfied, customers tend to be satisfied too. So what do you have to hide?
What are archetypes? And why are they important to branding building?
Watch our latest slideshow presentation to learn how to create authentic customer loyalty and develop a powerful brand that customers can’t live without.
Chris Robert, assistant professor of management at the University of Missouri-Columbia’s Robert J. Trulaske Sr. College of Business, studied the effects of humor in the workplace. While it’s an axiom that a happy workplace boosts morale, Robert found that humor is positively associated with workplace performance and employee retention.
Robert explains, “If you have positive emotions about your job, you’re less likely to quit. You might get a better job offer, but it will take more to draw you away when you like where you work and you like the people you work with.”
Great companies like online retailer Zappos intuitively understands the power of humor and its ability to ease stressful situations, build rapport and foster cohesiveness within the workplace. At any moment during the workday, the folks at Zappos might spontaneously rally around a friendly Oreo-eating competition, or a “Chubby Bunny Contest.” How many marshmallows can you fit into your mouth?
At Zappos, you might also be a contender in their Thumb Wars competition, or have as much fun watching it on the sidelines:
While these antics might be grounds for termination at your average corporation, Zappos encourages its employees to create fun and a little weirdness. In fact, it’s third on their top-ten-list of core values.
In Zappos’s eyes, employees are not just goofing off and wasting time. This is a valued and expected part of their workday. When humor infuses the workplace, it becomes a breeding ground for happiness, productivity, creativity and innovation. And when employees are feeling positive, customers are the first to take notice.
The bar has been permanently raised. Companies like Zappos, L.L. Bean, and Amazon.com have set a new standard in customer service. There’s simply no going back, but apparently many retailers still haven’t received the memo.
I recently purchased a gift card at the clothing retailer Forever 21. When I submitted the order, I waited for my confirmation receipt via email. I waited several days but nothing came. A week passed; still no word. I logged into my account online to double check that my order was placed. The order was listed but no other information was provided.
I called the customer service center. Apparently, I missed the fine print that my order would be received within 5 to 10 business days. When I asked when it was supposed to ship, the rep replied, “I don’t have that information.” To prevent further delay, I inquired how I could change the shipping address to ensure my niece would receive her gift before graduation day. I was told, “You can’t change the order once it’s been submitted.” Even though the order hasn’t been shipped? The rep repeated, “You can’t change the order.”
With every question, I became increasingly frustrated by the customer service rep’s lack of creativity. She was clearly sticking to the rulebook and primed to say “no” with every inquiry.
I asked one final question, “Can I just cancel my order?” Finally, I got a “yes.” The customer service rep replied, “I’ll go ahead and cancel your order. Can I help you with anything else?”
No, you’ve done enough.
Forever 21 needs to take a lesson or two from Zappos. At Zappos, customer service is an art form, not a necessary evil. It’s not relegated to a specific department, but rather cultivated throughout the entire organization.
CEO Tony Hsieh understands the importance of communication and perceives the telephone as “one of the best branding devices available.” Representatives of their Customer Loyalty Team are not evaluated by length of call time or sales-based performance goals. In fact, team members are expected to ensure that the customer’s needs are fulfilled—however long it may take. If Zappos doesn’t have a specific size or style in stock, customers may be directed to competitors’ websites.
Hsieh explained, “People may not remember exactly what you did or what you said, but they will always remember how you made them feel.” So even if a sale is lost in the moment, the investment pays off in the long run.
Forever 21 not only lost a sale, but most of all, a customer. When the bar is raised this high, who can afford to be Forever Mediocre?
The 
People “get” what you’re feeling—consciously or not. If you don’t really care about your customers, they’ll be the first ones to know.
“My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.”
At the 
