17 4 / 2011
3 ways to become an effective customer
The customers we serve at LaunchBit are entrepreneurs, so they tend to be pretty creative in getting what they want. I thought I’d share some of the ways they’ve taught me to be a more effective customer.
1) Just show up. At LaunchBit, we often speak in public, and almost all of our events sell out quickly. When all our tickets are gone, we often get a barrage of requests asking if there are extra tickets. Unfortunately, the answer is almost always no. However, most events, even paid-ones such as ours, have a no-show rate of 5-10%. So for the 1-5 entrepreneurs who just show up to our events on a whim hoping to get a ticket at the door, we always let them in. How can I say no? I can’t say no to someone who tells me they’ve just battled traffic for 30 min dying to see me talk. For free events, your chances are even better, because the no-show rates I’ve seen in a prior life have been upwards to 40%. I now use this trick all the time – don’t ask if you can attend, because the answer is no – just show up.
2) Ask how, not if. Speaking of asks, if you do have to ask for something, ask how, not if, something can be done. Some of our entrepreneurs ask for all kinds of things. I’m opening the floodgates here…but for example, “How can I get the early bird rate?” (even though it’s past the deadline) And again, how can I say no to someone who says he/she really would love to take my class but can’t afford the higher price? I’ve even heard an account of someone who asked the founder of Balsamiq for a free copy of Balsamiq software. The asker mentioned he/she couldn’t afford it but had heard so many great things about the software and wanted to write a raving review on his blog. The Balsamiq founder, of course, sent him a free copy – how could he say no to that? Most rules that companies set up to structure price are arbitrary and are meant to be asked how they can be changed. Obviously, not all asks will work with all companies – you probably can’t write to Bill Gates asking for the newest copy of MSFT Office. But, can you ask for other things of large companies? Most certainly. For example, every time I have a bad experience with a product, I always write to the company asking how I can get a replacement or ask what the company can do about the situation. It doesn’t matter if the product is past warranty or whatnot. The key is to explain how much you love(d) the company and either convey that you want to see how they can help you tell all your friends about their product or convey just how disappointed you were that they had let you down. Obviously, this has to be genuine, so it’s not like you can use this all the time. But, more often than not, people don’t do this when they really should – most companies want to keep you happy, so just ask how they can help you. This is how I’ve received things like hundreds of dollars in travel vouchers, a new cheese grater, a new blender, a new cast iron skillet, a new non-stick frying pan, and all kinds of fees waived or reversed across multiple services in the last two years.
3) Make questions/critiques public. If you are having trouble getting in contact with a company, in this day and age, there are multiple ways to escalate your complaint publicly. Recently, I had an issue with Comcast – after sending them multiple letters/communications over the course of months without any response, I dropped one quick email to the Massachusetts Consumer Complaints department, and that week, I received a phone call from the executive office at Comcast, which took care of the problem right away. Consumer Complaints really works – it took just 10-20 min to write the email, and in a 20 min phone call with Comcast (who called me), everything got resolved. Contrast this with the hours I had spent on-hold with Comcast’s customer service and writing letters and emails to their customer service department. Taking your problem to a 3rd party can expedite issues. An even less time consuming way to do this is to tweet on Twitter. After getting the run around from Sprint for a while, I decided to tweet at Sprint’s Twitter handle to publicly air my issues. Needless to say, they responded within seconds. On the flip side, when people tweet us questions/feedback to our LaunchBit handle, we also respond immediately, because it’s so important for us to be transparent. Every company wants to make sure they look good to the public, so they are much more responsive to these public questions/comments.