Category Archives: marketing

Five Ways Fender Guitar Rocks Customer Service

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Five Ways Fender Guitar Rocks Customer Service

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

In 1946, Leo Fender, founder of Fender’s Radio Service, renamed his company Fender Electric Instrument Company—better known as Fender—and it became an iconic music company that manufactures some of the greatest guitars and amplifiers on the planet. Leo Fender had a saying back then: “Artists are angels. It’s our job to give them wings to fly.”

You could call that saying a mission, vision or values statement. In just 12 words it sums up Fender’s desire to create the best musical instruments for his customers. Even though the company was sold to CBS in 1965 and then purchased by its employees in 1985, the words are still a part of Fender’s culture 77 years later.

I had a chance to interview Scot Pickerill, Fender’s vice president of Americas Inside Sales, Service and Sales Operations, for Amazing Business Radio, and he repeated Leo Fender’s vision. He referred to it as Fender’s “call to action.” He also shared several other ideas that I want to examine here. Before we get into that, you should know that Fender recognizes and supports two types of customers. There is a dealer network that sells the products. These range from independent “mom-and-pop” stores to large chains like Guitar Center. They also support the consumers who own and play their instruments.

So, with that in mind, here are five ways Fender rocks customer service. I’ll share Pickerill’s strategies, followed by my comments.

1. Continuous Improvement

Continuous improvement is about identifying friction points with every department involved and analyzing the process to correct problems and prevent issues from happening in the future.

Continuous improvement goes beyond improving the customer experience. It’s looking at every part of the process, including what’s happening behind the scenes. Even if the customers don’t feel any friction in their experience, it’s essential to eliminate or mitigate any internal friction caused by outdated or cumbersome practices and processes.

2. Treat Your Customers Like Partners

Fender doesn’t want to just sell a customer a guitar. They want to partner with customers in their musical journeys, and they want their partners to be successful. When they take care of their customers, the customers want to give back, and they do so in the form of repeat business.

3. Embrace Feedback from Both Customers and Employees

Fender goes beyond asking for feedback from its customers. It also asks for feedback from employees, especially those on the front line. And getting that feedback is just the start. As Pickerill said, “Feedback is one of the few things in life that is free. Take that feedback and do something with it.” I’ll add that once you do something with the feedback, let everyone know what you did. If you want more feedback, prove that you’re listening and taking action on the feedback you receive.

4. Get uncomfortable

Taking a business to the next level isn’t easy. There could be a little pain and fear involved. Innovation is about moving forward, and that requires change. Many people are happy to settle for the status quo because they are uncomfortable with anything new or different. But not Fender. Pickerill said, “The world is evolving daily. Customer expectations are increasing, and buying behaviors are shifting. Don’t be afraid to lean into discomfort, test new things and then measure to ensure that it’s working the way you designed it.”

5. It’s All About Culture

Pickerill is proud to acknowledge that Fender employees live, breathe and speak the brand. He sees the passion in employees, including executives. They have the desire to leave a mark and constantly improve to help artists and potential artists and make them as great as they can be. This way of thinking comes from the top down and is a perfect reminder of Leo Fender’s words, which Pickerill refers to as Fender’s call to action: “Artists are angels. It’s our job to give them wings to fly.”

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com

Image Credit: Pexels

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The Loyalty Gap

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The Difference Between Repeat Customers and Loyal Customers

The Loyalty Gap

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

In a recent Shepard Letter, I discussed the Trust Gap, which is the difference between an organization’s belief that their customers trust them and the percentage of customers who actually do. I’ve covered different gap concepts in the past, and it’s time to add yet another to the list, and that is the Loyalty Gap.

By the way, this is a perfect time to mention International Customer Loyalty Month, which happens every year in April. It is a time to focus some extra care and attention on your loyal customers. You can learn more at www.CustomerLoyaltyMonth.com.

So, back to the Loyalty Gap. This is the gap between the percentage of customers you think are loyal and customers who actually are loyal. If you’ve been following my work, you may remember that I preach there is a big difference between a repeat customer and a loyal customer. A customer that comes back again and again could be mistakenly labeled as a loyal customer. Before we can call someone a loyal customer, we must find out why they keep coming back and buying from us. And there are many reasons why customers might return that have nothing to do with being loyal. For example:

1. The Price Is Lowest: Customers who buy based on low price aren’t loyal to you. They are loyal to the price. The moment a competitor has a lower price, the customer disappears. And you thought they were loyal!

2. The Location Is More Convenient: Does the customer buy from you because you are closer than your competition? You don’t know if you don’t ask. As soon as a competitor moves into the area, if their location happens to be more convenient, the customer moves on. Again, you thought they were loyal!

3. The Customer Is Satisfied: This one is super important. There’s a big difference between a satisfied customer and a loyal customer. Satisfied customers are just … satisfied. The experience is good, but not great. It’s enough to get them to come back until they find another brand or organization that satisfies them just a bit more.

A loyal customer not only comes back but also spends more than a typical customer and evangelizes your brand by sharing word-of-mouth referrals. This is because there is an emotional connection. Maybe it’s the way the customer is treated. Or maybe there is an employee the customer loves to work with. Maybe it’s the confidence that’s created when a customer interacts with the brand. There are many reasons, but they all evoke an emotional connection.

So, what’s the Loyalty Gap in your business?

Do you understand your customers’ buying patterns?

Do you know why they come back?

In a perfect world, there shouldn’t be a gap. But that’s not reality. There will always be customers who don’t have the emotional connection needed to drive loyalty. There’s nothing you can do but keep trying. For the rest of your repeat customers, understand why they return, then keep delivering the experience that makes them want to return.

Image Credit: Pexels

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Ten Reasons You Must Deliver Amazing Customer Experiences

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Ten Reasons You Must Deliver Amazing Customer Experiences

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Ten years ago, I wrote an article about why delivering an amazing customer service experience is important. While many of those concepts are still valid today, it’s time to modify the list and give a few of the original reasons a facelift to bring them into current times.

First, a reminder that an amazing customer experience isn’t about being over the top. It’s simply consistently meeting or (ever so slightly) exceeding expectations. It’s the consistent and predictable experience that makes customers trust you and come back.

So, here are today’s ten (10) reasons why you should deliver an amazing customer service experience:

  1. Creating customer service builds trust, credibility and confidence. Our customer experience research found that 83% of people trust a company or brand more if it delivers good customer service. The benefit of building trust is potential customer loyalty.

  2. Your happy customers become the best members of your marketing department. The right customer experience gets customers to talk about you, refer you and evangelize your brand.

  3. Delivering an amazing customer experience makes price less relevant. Fifty-eight percent of customers we surveyed said excellent customer service is more important than price.

  4. A great customer experience goes hand-in-hand with a great employee experience. It’s no surprise that the best customer-focused companies are also some of the best places to work. Just compare a list of companies that provide the highest levels of customer satisfaction with the list of the best places to work on www.GlassDoor.com. It’s no coincidence that many of the same companies appear at the top of both lists.

  5. Customers who typically receive excellent customer service from you will be more willing to provide honest feedback when there is a problem or complaint because they trust that you will fix the problem. And when you do, they come back.

    6. Shep Hyken Amazing Cartoon

  6. Seventy-eight percent of the customers we surveyed said they would go out of their way to do business with a company that delivers a better customer service experience.

  7. You can’t afford not to deliver a strong customer service experience. Seventy-four percent of customers would switch to a business that provides better customer service.

  8. A good customer service experience leads to higher customer retention and customer lifetime value (CLV).

  9. An amazing customer service experience begets positive comments and reviews.

  10. Finally, do it because it’s the right thing to do!

If you want customers to do business with you, you must treat them in a way that makes them want to do so. Don’t expect them to be loyal to you until you show loyalty to them. That comes in the form of delivering an amazing customer experience.

This article originally appeared on Hyken.com

Image Credit: Pixabay, Shep Hyken

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How Community is Reshaping the Marketing Landscape

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How Community is Reshaping the Marketing Landscape

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

According to bestselling author and marketing expert Mark Schaefer, the next—and last—great marketing strategy is community. When I read his latest book, Belonging to the Brand, I was intrigued by the subtitle, Why Community is the Last Great Marketing Strategy. Is it really the last? Having read Schaefer’s past books, I put faith in his words, but it’s up to you to decide.

First, let’s look at the definition of community, as it applies to marketing and business. The community includes customers aligned with the company, its brand promise and what it stands for. Schaefer writes in his introduction, “Helping a person belong to something represents the ultimate marketing achievement. If a customer opts into an engaging, supportive and relevant brand community, we no longer need to lure them into our orbit with ads and SEO, right? What we used to consider marketing is essentially over.”

Schaefer is saying that once the customer is part of the community, the need to engage with intrusive advertising and marketing messages is no longer needed. You will want to find meaningful ways to connect with customers other than traditional advertising and marketing programs, and these can include positive customer experiences, quality dependable products and services, the contribution the brand or company makes to making the world a better place and more.

In my book, The Amazement Revolution, one of the seven strategies covered was community. Harley Davidson was failing and rallied its community of customers to make suggestions that would get them to come back and buy its motorcycles. The company listened, the customers noticed and Harley regained its popularity and iconic status.

Lush, a cosmetics retailer with more than 950 stores worldwide, chose to make its products cruelty-free, which means no animals are harmed in manufacturing the products. They knew this would appeal to a segment of customers who are against animal testing practices. Those customers show intense loyalty toward Lush.

Apple created different communities of customers who voluntarily offer suggestions and answers to other customers in need of help and support. These communities are in addition to Apple’s regular customer support options.

These companies (and many others) have created communities of customers willing to evangelize their brands. They enjoy and love the companies so much that they provide some of the most powerful marketing techniques ever in the form of positive reviews and referrals, also known as word-of-mouth marketing.

Early in Schaefer’s book, he shares ten (10) reasons businesses can’t ignore the power of creating a community. I’ll share three of them with some of my commentary on each one:

  1. Brand Differentiation: Beyond price and product, which are often similar to the competition’s, the community can create an emotional connection. People like to belong to something. When they love a company and its products and find others who think and feel the way they do, they naturally gravitate toward the community. Once people join, they are participating at a higher level of brand engagement and their connection to the business is deepened by this connection.

  2. Market Relevance: How do you stay relevant? Listen to your customers. The community gives you the forum to listen and engage with your customers. The conversations you monitor or participate in will fuel you with ideas to make you even more relevant to your customers. Just remember, no matter how powerful the ideas and information you learn from listening are, they won’t mean anything unless you take action.

  3. Brand Loyalty: Loyalty is an emotional connection. Creating a community is a powerful way to drive loyalty. Schaefer shares some stats that make the case. Sixty-six percent of brand community members say they are loyal to the brand. Twenty-seven percent of customers say belonging to a brand influences their decision to do business with the brand. And, 66% of companies claim their community has impact on customer retention.

As powerful as creating a community is, don’t be lured into thinking you have a captive audience to which you can sell. That’s abusing the privilege and could be an insult to your customers. While members of your community may be more engaged and buy more, they don’t want to be sold. Use the community to offer early access to products and updates, ask for opinions and feedback, help in testing products and more. You want to give them a reason to meet and something to talk about.

So, is creating your company’s community your next big marketing strategy? If you haven’t already created one, it’s a concept worthy of serious consideration.

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com

Image Credit: Pixabay, Shep Hyken

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AI is a Powerful New Tool for Entrepreneurs

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AI is a Powerful New Tool for Entrepreneurs

by Braden Kelley

In today’s digital, always connected world, Google too often stands as a gatekeeper between entrepreneurs and small businesses and financial success. Ranking well in the search engines requires time and expertise that many entrepreneurs and small business owners don’t have, because their focus must be on fine tuning the value proposition and operations of their business.

The day after Google was invented, the search engine marketing firm was probably created to make money off of hard working entrepreneurs and small businesses owners trying to make the most of their investment in a web site through search engine optimization (SEO), keyword advertising, and social media strategies.

According to IBISWorld the market size of the SEO & Internet Marketing Consulting industry is $75.0 Billion. Yes, that’s billion with a ‘b’.

Creating content for web sites is an even bigger market. According to Technavio the global content marketing size is estimated to INCREASE by $584.0 Billion between 2022 and 2027. This is the growth number. The market itself is MUCH larger.

The introduction of ChatGPT threatens to upend these markets, to the detriment of this group of businesses, but to the benefit to the nearly 200,000 dentists in the United States, more than 100,000 plumbers, million and a half real estate agents, and numerous other categories of small businesses.

Many of these content marketing businesses create a number of different types of content for the tens of millions of small businesses in the United States, from blog articles to tweets to Facebook pages and everything in-between. The content marketing agencies that small businesses hire recent college graduates or offshore resources in places like the Philippines, India, Pakistan, Ecuador, Romania, and lots of other locations around the world and bill their work to their clients at a much higher rate.

Outsourcing content creation has been a great way for small businesses to leverage external resources so they can focus on the business, but now may be the time to bring some of this content creation work back in house. Particularly where the content is pretty straightforward and informational for an average visitor to the web site.

With ChatGPT you can ask it to “write me an article on how to brush your teeth” or “write me ten tweets on teethbrushing” or “write me a facebook post on the most common reasons a toilet won’t flush.”

I asked it to do the last one for me and here is what it came up with:

Continue reading the rest of this article on CustomerThink (including the ChatGPT results)

Image credits: Pixabay

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Branding versus Bonding

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The Importance of Community in Marketing

Exclusive Interview with Mark Schaefer

Mark W SchaeferConventional marketing wisdom says that communities are a great way to connect with your target audience in an engaging and meaningful way. Typical justifications for building communities include:

  • Creating an opportunity for your brand to stand out from the competition
  • Providing a platform for customers to interact and collaborate with you and each other
  • Monitoring and responding to customer feedback quickly
  • Helping build trust and loyalty with your customers
  • Driving organic growth and engagement

But successful communities go beyond company-outwards branding and instead create customer-inwards bonding.

I had the opportunity recently to interview Mark Schaefer, a globally-acclaimed author, keynote speaker, and marketing consultant. He is a faculty member of Rutgers University and one of the top business bloggers and podcasters in the world. Mark is the executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions, Chief Executive Officer of B Squared Media and on the advisory board of several startups. He has been a contributor to Harvard Business Review and Entrepreneur magazine.

His latest book is Belonging to the Brand: Why Community is the Last Great Marketing Strategy and explores how companies can make more effective use of communities in their marketing activities.

Below is the text of my interview with Mark and a preview of the kinds of insights you’ll find in Belonging to the Brand presented in a Q&A format:

1. Marketers are trained to reach the right audience with the right message to be successful. How is community different from audience?

From a brand marketing perspective, an audience — a group who opts-in to your content — is very important because they’ve allowed themselves to be connected to your message. However, an even more powerful opportunity exists if you can turn that audience into a community.

There are three distinguishing features of a community:

  1. There is communion. People know each other. They may become friends, collaborate, and help each other. This is important because that emotional benefit transfers to the brand!
  2. Purpose. People need a reason to gather. They want to grow something, change something, build something. How does this purpose intersect with the purpose of the brand? That’s when the magic starts to happen.
  3. Adaptability. The priorities of a community will change over time as the world changes. A community cannot be rigid in its structure or it will become irrelevant.

2. Why should marketers invest in learning how to build and connect with communities?

I have been in marketing nearly four decades and I can say with some authority that our job is harder than ever! Many traditional channels just don’t work any more. We are in a streaming media society now and most people sim0lt block us out.

Community provides a new way to connect in a meaningful way with customers. In fact, it might be the only type of marketing people won’t block. It’s the only kind of marketing people actually need because community is essential to our psychological health, especially now.

So, I think it makes sense for businesses to at least consider community since that may have no other choice.

3. Why do people join communities?

Psychological studies show that community is not just a nice-to-have. It is essential for our social well-being. Studies show that we are even physically better off when we have meaningful relationships in a community. So this is a deep-seated need in us from the beginning of time and it will always be there.

4. How can we be more connected than ever before, but also more alone?

I think social media gives us the impression that we are just a click away from a relationship but we’re not. Much of this time online is empty social calories. There is definitely a positive role social media can play in connecting people and building relationships, but it is also a powerful source of disconnection, depression, and isolation. Much of this problem was amplified by the pandemic, but the global mental health crisis has really been creeping up on us since the 1960s.

5. Are there secrets to intentionally building a community?

Belonging to the Brand - Mark SchaeferMy book provides a framework for building a community. Some of the essential steps include:

  1. Assessing the culture — Community is a business strategy, not just a marketing strategy. Is the organization behind the idea?
  2. Establishing purpose — is there a meaningful reason to gather?
  3. Building a tribe — Where are the important early members?
  4. Leadership — Nurturing a community is much different than what we are accustomed to in a traditional marketing role.
  5. Building — Building a community is constant hard work
  6. Measurement — This is difficult in a community but my book provides a path forward

6. What should marketers be most careful of when using community as a marketing strategy?

Most communities fail because they are designed to sell stuff! Obviously, we do need to sell stuff, but that’s not a reason to gather. If you provide great value to your customers, they will naturally be attracted to your products and services.

7. Should everyone be equal for a community to be successful?

I’m not sure if people are ever equal in every way. We all have our own unique talents. In a community, leaders will naturally emerge. A big part of community management is recognizing emerging leaders and bestowing them with status.

8. Where should companies build a community?

There is no cookie-cutter answer to that. But it helps if the community is part of a person’s natural daily organic experience. For example, if your customers like Facebook and visit there every day, it would be easy for them to find your community there. Try not to build your community in a place that requires new skills or an extra click.

9. Who in the marketing department should own community strategy?

I’m not sure that is important as long as it IS the marketing department. It’s unbelievable to me that 70% of existing brand communities do NOT report to marketing. This is frankly hard to understand. A community is the front line of your business — the most important customer connection. How can that no be part of marketing?

10. What does community success look like?

In the long term, there has to be a financial benefit, but in the short-term, engagement is probably the most important metric. For example, Sephora is a global cosmetics retailer with hundreds of brick-and-mortar locations. However, 80 percent of their revenue comes from their online community.

Their most important metric? Engagement. If people are talking about the company’s content and activities, it is a sign that are staying relevant and moving in a way that will lead to more brand advocacy and sales.

In the context of social media, I’m not a big fan of engagement as a metric, but in community, it is probably the most important leading indicator of financial success.

Conclusion

Thank you for the great conversation Mark!

I hope everyone has enjoyed this peek into the mind of the man behind the inspiring new title Belonging to the Brand!

Image credits: BusinessesGrow.com (Mark W Schaefer)

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Top 20 Customer Experience All-Stars of 2022

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Top 20 Customer Experience All-Stars

by Braden Kelley

Recently Forbes and HundredX partnered together to produce a list for three hundred (300) customer experience all-stars utilizing an extensive online survey over the course of 2022, gathering 3.7+ million ratings of more than 2,220 unique brands.

121,000 respondents chose and rated the brands and products they view most positively across more than a dozen categories scoring the company’s products, services and treatment of customers.

The list at the link above can be searched for a specific company or sorted by brand category. If you want to see all 300, go there, but if you just want to see the Top 20 Customer Experience All-Stars, here they are:

  1. Buc-ee’s
  2. Chick-fil-A
  3. Toyota
  4. Costco
  5. In-N-Out Burger
  6. See’s Candies
  7. Trader Joe’s
  8. Chewy
  9. Lexus
  10. Publix Super Markets
  11. Honda
  12. Wawa
  13. Mario
  14. Dutch Bros. Coffee
  15. Zelda
  16. QuikTrip
  17. Marriott
  18. Apple iPad
  19. Wegmans Food Markets
  20. Cooper’s Hawk Winery & Restaurants

Here is an example of the first page of a brand survey from their methodology:

CX All Stars Survey Page 1

From here it goes into what’s good and not so good about the product, what’s good and not so good about the platform & company, and then digs into why the survey participant said certain items were good or not so good, before finishing with an open comments box and a rating of future usage and 10-point scale on likelihood of recommendation. People can rate up to seventy-five brands.

Takeaways

Customer Experience is incredibly important, and recently in my article Brewing a Better Customer Experience I laid out both the Seven Characteristics of a Great Customer Experience and also the Seven Steps to a Better Customer Experience. Both lists are available there as downloadable PDF flip books.

And while I disagree on certain elements of the methodology used to craft this list, particularly the comingling of brands and products together in the same list, it nonetheless helps to shine a light on the importance of focusing on delivering a great customer experience – and that’s a good thing.

People often underestimate the importance of customer experience in the success of any business. Luckily research has been done on the impact of customer experience on sales, and here are three of my favorites:

  • “86% of users are inclined to pay more for a great customer experience.” (source: Super Office)
  • “32% of customers “break up” with a favorite brand after one poor customer experience.” (source: Iperceptions)
  • “64% of buyers consider customer experience more important than price.” (source: Iperceptions)

Finally, very soon I will be publishing a series of new Customer Experience articles on the HCLTech Blog that will go into some of the next practices for customer experience research, personas, journey mapping, and experience improvement. I will introduce and link to them here, so stay tuned!

Image credit: Unsplash, HundredX

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Rise of the Chief Trust Officer

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Rise of the Chief Trust Officer

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Do your customers trust you?

Are you sure?

According to PwC’s 2022 Consumer Intelligence Series Survey on Trust, 87% of executives think customers highly trust their companies, but only about 30% of customers do. That’s a 57% gap!

The PwC survey also found 71% of consumers say they’re unlikely to buy if a company loses their trust, and 71% of employees say they’re likely to leave if they lose trust. The lack of trust can result in huge problems.

Deloitte reports that of more than 260 C-suite executives surveyed, 61% claimed their organizations would work to improve trust with customers and employees. However, just 19% have a leader in the C-suite to oversee the effort, and less than 14% have a way to track trust. Ashley Reichheld, principal and trust leader at Deloitte Consulting LLP, says, “Building trust is among the most powerful ways brands can earn loyalty, drive differentiation and create competitive advantage.”

According to David Horsager, global authority on trust, “A lack of trust is your biggest expense in business.” His research has found that when a leader is untrusted, both employee and customer satisfaction decreases. Conversely, if a brand is trusted, revenue and employee retention increase.

The goal is to narrow the trust gap. Ideally, you want to eliminate the gap altogether. Here are ten ways to make that happen:

  1. Be Transparent – Being open and honest about your policies, delivery times, processes and more builds trust and confidence with your customers. You want them to know you and how you operate.

  2. Do What You Say You Will Do – Deliver on whatever you promise. There are many ways to lose a customer’s trust, but the fastest may be to break a promise. In short, a broken promise is a lie.

  3. Provide Excellent Customer Service – Our customer experience research found that 84% of consumers trust a company or brand more if it provides an excellent customer service experience.

  4. Protect Your Customer’s Privacy – Data protection is a hot topic. With all the data breaches, customers need to know you make a great effort to protect any information they share with you.

  5. Don’t Abuse Your Customer’s Data – This goes right along with protecting your customer’s privacy. If they are willing to give you information about themselves, even if it is just payment information and an email address, don’t abuse it by spamming the customer or selling the information to others.

  6. Be Reliable – A customer expects that what they buy from a company does what it is supposed to do. Products must be reliable and dependable. In addition, they also expect the company to stand behind what it sells with the right level of customer service.

  7. Fast Response – Customers have different tolerances for how long they will wait on hold, wait for a return phone call, an email response, etc. When it comes to customer service, fast means meeting a customer’s expectations.

  8. Be Accessible – Start with being easy to reach. Easy-to-find contact information on a website is important. Hours of operation, at least for customer service, must also meet your customer’s needs and expectations.

  9. Act on Customer Feedback – It’s one thing to gather feedback. It’s another to act on it. And once you act on the feedback, let the customers know they were heard. Always thank customers for their feedback, and follow up if it is appropriate to do so.

Create a Chief Trust Officer Role (or Something Similar) – This goes back to the finding from Deloitte at the beginning of this article. Just 19% of companies have a leader in the C-suite to oversee the effort of creating trust with customers.

Now that we understand more about the importance of trust, we might say those companies with a dedicated “trust officer” are a step ahead, taking advantage of a somewhat overlooked aspect of customer service. Seems like a great opportunity for any company to step up and focus on building trust—and the business that is sure to follow.

This article was originally published on Forbes.com.

Image Credit: Pixabay

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Radical Transparency is One Key to a Better Customer Experience

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Radical Transparency is One Key to a Better Customer Experience

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Most customer-focused businesses work very hard to streamline their encounters and interactions with potential clients, curating the experience to the smallest detail so every step of the process can be managed and controlled. It all starts with a customer journey map that optimizes the process. When the process is consistent and predictable, you start to build trust with your customers. And, there’s a way to take that trust to another level, and that’s with transparency.

Darryl “The Hammer” Isaacs, a Kentucky-based attorney, has built a profitable career by being surprisingly straightforward — another word for transparent — with his clients. He has the process down, which means he knows the law and how to litigate. But just as important as winning a lawsuit is how his clients are treated.

Since it opened in 1993, his firm, Isaacs & Isaacs Personal Injury Lawyers, has helped thousands of people recover over $2 billion from insurers. He is a celebrity in the three states where he operates (Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio), with plenty of TV ads and billboards lining the highways. But Isaacs will tell you that his secret goes beyond exposure from a big ad budget. And it isn’t about knowing the law and winning. For him, it’s just as important to build a reputation by being transparent. And he takes the concept to an even higher level by being radically transparent.

I had a chance to learn from Isaacs’ success and his thought process, which he says is based on three concepts: being humble and embracing adversity, providing easy access and trusting the public with your pain.

1. Embrace Humble Beginnings and Adversity

Isaacs’ journey to becoming a lawyer wasn’t easy. It began at age six when he watched his father’s legal swearing-in ceremony. That inspired him to want to practice law, but inspiration wasn’t enough. He failed the bar exam the first two times he took it. No one would blame Isaacs for keeping that information from the public. After all, in the competitive legal field, lawyers like to let clients know about their prestigious law schools, industry awards and big wins. Isaacs recognized the importance of that, but also chose to embrace his “humble beginnings” as a possible advantage. He believed people could relate to his struggle. This transparency makes him real and approachable to his clients. He also has an incredible work ethic. Isaacs says, “I’m not smarter than other lawyers, I just work harder.” His clients may not know about the legal world’s awards and top schools, but they understand and appreciate hard work.

2. Provide Unexpected Access

Have you ever tried to reach the CEO or owner of a successful company? Typically, the bigger and more prosperous the company, the more challenging it is to get through to the business owner or high-level execs. Isaacs is not only successful, but his advertisements and reputation have given him celebrity status in his market. His firm has more than 55 employees, many of whom could act as a “first line” of defense for deflecting calls, emails, letters, etc. But Isaacs embraces the concept of approachability. He happily shares his direct line and cell number with his clients. Text him, and he responds. Call him, and he returns the call. Isaac believes, “If you provide unexpected direct access, clients feel valued and appreciated.”

3. Trust the Public with Your Pain

Similar to the way Isaacs embraces his humble beginnings, he embraces the transparency of results. In an age of social media, it’s nearly impossible to hide any negative news affecting a high-profile business. Issacs says, “The best option is to get comfortable and let the public in.” In other words, embrace the negative and view it as an opportunity to be authentic and transparent. And it goes beyond social media reviews and comments. Isaacs took this concept to a personal level in 2015 when he was hit by a speeding car while riding his bicycle. His neck was broken in two places, and he sustained a traumatic brain injury. The face of a successful company was now in the hospital in a near-death situation. That could have been the beginning of the end for the firm. He might not ever be back. And what if people found out about this? Well, rather than try to keep the news out of the press, Isaacs did a phone interview from the hospital. First, he wanted to let the world know he wasn’t dead and would be back. Second, he was now experiencing a similar condition to many of his clients. Isaacs knew transparency—and even vulnerability—at this level would make him more approachable. The result was an even higher level of trust.

Isaacs uses the word radical, meaning extreme or intense, to demonstrate just how important it is for him and his firm to be transparent. But are his three concepts really that radical or extreme? Maybe, because customers aren’t used to this level of transparency, but isn’t this what customers want? Isaacs’ three concepts could easily form a foundation of transparency that would help any company or brand, big or small, build trust, create confidence and connect emotionally with customers.

This article was originally published on Forbes.com.

Image Credit: Shep Hyken

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How to Turn Customers into Superfans

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How to Turn Customers into Superfans

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

What do Apple, Zappos, and Chick-fil-A have in common? They are considered “rockstar” brands. Their loyal customers—and they have many—keep coming back and evangelizing these brands, singing their praises to the world. The customers are also willing to defend their favorite brand should someone say something negative about it.

There is a word to describe these types of customers. They are fans, and more specifically, they are superfans. Brittany Hodak may be the foremost expert on the concept of creating superfans in business. In her recently published book, Creating Superfans: How to Turn Your Customers Into Lifelong Advocates, she defines a superfan as “a customer or stakeholder who is so delighted by their experience with a brand, product or service that they become an enthusiastic advocate.”

Hodak’s mantra is:

If your customers aren’t telling their friends about you, you’re in trouble.

So, how do you get your customers to come back, defend your reputation, and spread compliments about you? Follow Hodak’s SUPER model. The word SUPER is an acronym. To whet your appetite for this important literary contribution to the world of customer experience, I’ll share what each letter of the acronym means, followed by my commentary. Some of this is my own interpretation of Hodak’s model, but you will get the idea. So, here is Brittany Hodak’s SUPER model:

  • S – Start With Your Story: Sharing your “story” is powerful. Just make sure it’s the story that will get your customer excited about doing business with you. How should it start? Ask yourself, “Why does a customer want to do business with us (instead of our competition)?” Responses that are truly different will be important to the story. Hodak says, “Your story is your superpower.”

  • U – Understand Your Customer’s Story: Why do customers need you? The answer is their story, and when their story intersects with yours, you have the opportunity to do business, grow the relationship and create a superfan.

  • P – Personalize: The concept of personalizing the experience is a hot topic. Using data about the customer (in the right way) will create a connection. Abuse the data, and the customer will disassociate from you. Hodak uses Chewy, the online pet food, and supply retailer. The company not only know its customers’ buying habits but also often knows their pets’ names—and they use that information to create a better relationship and emotional connection with the customers. This is an excellent example of personalization.

  • E – Exceed Expectations: People often think exceeding expectations is difficult. The reason is because they confuse exceeding expectations with going above and beyond. There are opportunities to do that in special situations, but most of the time, you just need to be a little better than expected. Even the slightest bit better. When you’re at a restaurant, and you are told the wait will be ten minutes, but your name is called in eight minutes, that’s an example of exceeding expectations by being slightly better than expected. The key is to do this consistently. You want your customers to use the word always followed by something positive, such as, “They are always helpful,” to describe their experience with you.

  • R – Repeat: I love the idea of repeat. Create the system with an outcome that drives a positive customer experience every time. The key word here is system. A system can be scaled and is repeatable. It is consistent, and customers love consistency. If the initial experience was good, the next time they come back, they want more of the same. When it happens again and again, the customer “owns” the experience. They can count on it happening. Their confidence about the experience is so high they not only come back, but they also tell others. Creating superfans is an everyday, never-ending effort. Do what works again and again.

Okay, I admit it. I’m a Brittany Hodak superfan. I fall under the category of evangelizing her brand, and recommending her to clients, and now I’m writing about her book. I’m a perfect example of one of the ways Hodak describes a superfan, which is a great way to wrap up this article:

Superfans are customers who create more customers!

This article was originally published on Forbes.com.

Image Credit: Shep Hyken

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