What are your customers talking about after leaving your business, logging off your website or hanging up the phone?

I have to thank Ted Coine (@tedcoine) for inspiring this post.  Earlier this week I retweeted Ted:

John Ernsberger (johnestella) of Stella Service stated that roughly 6 out of every 7 tweets he sees involving customer service are negative.  I’m not sure of the sample size on his assessment as they (whoever they are) say that 68% of statistics are made up on the spot.  Whether its 70, 80 or 90% I think its a generally accepted fact that the overwhelming majority of tweets involving customer service are negative.  This led me to the following question:

Based on their experience . . . Is Your Customer a CONsumer or a PROsumer?

I wrote a post late last year about Bonnie Raitt and her most famous tune, “Let’s Give’em Something to Talk About”.  The post looked at the strategy behind customer experience.  Specifically:

• Who do we want talking?
• What do we want them saying?
• How can we add value?

Here is my take on how ‘marketing lagniappe’ addresses those issues:

• The best marketing is 1st person word of mouth, i.e. your customers
• Control the things you can control . . . how you treat your existing customers
• Deliver value with your product or service and exceed customer expectations
• Provide that ‘little signature something extra’ . . . a purple goldfish

Using a little artistic license (apologies Bonnie) on the song lyrics:

Let’s give them something to talk about
A little purple goldfish as they wonder out
Let’s give them something to talk, tweet, blog and Facebook about . . .

So – what are you doing to inspire positive word of mouth and mouse? Interested to hear your thoughts.

Today’s Lagniappe (a little something extra) – Thanks again Ted for inspiring this post.  If you are not following Ted on Twitter (@tedcoine) or his blog ‘Five Star Customer Service’ you are missing out.