Make Every Customer Touchpoint a Talking Point

I spent the better part of this week at the Direct Selling Association Annual Meeting in Miami. It was a wonderful time of education, celebration, and networking with some of my favorite people.

I also attended a session taught by John Moore of BrandAutopsy. He’s done marketing work for the likes of Starbucks and Whole Foods, and he shared some great ideas about creating a memorable customer experience that gets them talking. And after all, in social media, that’s exactly the kind of conversation we’re trying to generate: conversations about great experiences with our brand.

And the quote from John that has stayed with me (I even used it several times throughout the DSA meeting) was this: Make every customer touchpoint a talking point. What this means is that you want to think about each place the customer has an opportunity to interact with you (e.g. the point of sale, the follow-up, the online interaction, etc.) and make it memorable…something to talk about. Zappos does this well. Consider the shipping confirmation email I got when I placed an order with them recently:

Your Shipping Confirmation

Hello Jennifer!

Your order with Zappos.com has shipped. YAY! We’ve enclosed some tracking information, so you can follow your order to its final destination. It’s almost like being a superspy! Mission Control advises that you take a look at the top-secret information below.

Instead of being ordinary, they change it up, which catches your attention. In fact, I saw someone talking about receiving this very same email on Facebook just this morning. Zappos turned a customer touchpoint into a talking point.

So how can you turn your customer touchpoints into talking points? Here are some ideas:

1. If you’re in party plan, make the party spectacular. My friend Julie Anne Jones has a program called “Designing an Amazing Party Experience” that does just that. We used her model when I ran my direct sales company, and it resulted in memorable parties where people had a lot of fun, and were still talking about it the next day.
2. Go above and beyond when it comes to customer service. Make sure EVERY customer gets a phone call once their items have been delivered. Are they satisfied? Do they have any questions about how to use anything? Sure, everyone’s supposed to do that. But how many actually do? When you provide this level of service, customers will talk.
3. Participate in your community. Donate to good causes. Be visible. The more you demonstrate that you care about what your customers care about, the more likely it is that they’ll remember you, and recommend you. You can’t do a direct sales business in a bubble. You have to be a part of the community to be successful.

Make every customer touchpoint a talking point! It really does get them talking.