Community Building And Great Customer Service

I observed a couple of great examples of customer service and community building recently that I want to share with you.  I believe that customer service and community building are the same thing, by the way.  Whether your business is on-line or off, you better be viewing your customers as a community.  They honor you by choosing you, and you’d be an idiot not to value and nurture that relationship.

Doing it right by doing it wrong

I read Chris Brogan’s blog a lot.  I learn by watching successful people.  I learn not just from what they say and write, but by observing how they do and react to certain things.  You should too.

A few days ago, Chris posted a video review of a book.  He recorded the video while driving.  This was not the smartest thing to do, and he heard about it in the comments. There were about 25 comments and almost all of them were critical of his decision.  Even the ones that praised the review, had to comment about the driving while vlogging thing.

I liked how he handled the criticism.  He didn’t get defensive or delete or edit any of the comments.  He recorded a follow up video to try to reassure those concerned about safety that he believed what he did was safe. Then he said something that stuck with me. “If you’re still not pleased, it’s okay. I do lots of things you don’t like.”

Nurturing your community does not mean being who they want you to be.  Real leaders get this.  As long as you deliver value, your community (your customers) will be okay with disagreeing with you from time to time.  Be respectful but stand your ground. They might just respect you more for it.

Small gestures of courtesy are HUGE in business

I had been thinking about buying another copy of Gary Vaynerchuk‘s Crush It! for a friend.  It’s a great book for entrepreneurs, and I will do a review soon.  I follow Gary on Twitter and on Halloween I happened to catch a tweet from him announcing a deal. Buy the book that day, send him a copy of the receipt, and he’ll kick in something cool.  This was my perfect definition of marketing: Existing desire meets call to action.

I followed his link and bought the book. Not because of the offer but because I wanted a copy anyway.  His link reminded me of that, and provided an easy way for me to buy it.  I did send him a copy of my Amazon receipt, and got the book a few days later.  A few days after that, I got an email from someone at Gary’s company, telling me that Gary is getting a package together to send out soon, and thanking me for my support.  I completely forgot about the offer to kick in something extra.

Why I think this was awesome.  The offer from Gary was opened ended and seemed off the cuff. Anyone who took action because of this offer, was probably wondering about it at this point.  The email checking in with me was not a mass email sent to a list, but a reply to the email I sent them.  It did not matter to me that it was not from Gary. I’m not naive. He is way to busy not to have people taking care of some of the communication for him. Instead of having an assistant pretend to be him, he has an assistant being an assistant. How refreshing!

You want to build community and give great customer service? First, decide who you are as a company, or a personal brand, and BE THAT.  Don’t change your message with every complaint.  Do the little things that are really just common courtesy.  Treat customers like the individuals they are.  Automation is fine (and necessary) to scale your efforts but if done properly, it never makes your customers feel they are numbers on a list.  It really comes down to authenticity.