When clients are happy, they come to buy again or recommend you to others. And that’s your task to create such a great experience for them that they will remember you, your business and will become the evangelists of your service or product.
In this episode, Tim Reid shares how you can create a great customer experience.
Tim is an Australia’s leading Marketing speaker that moves the audience into immediate action.
Ring your top three customers and ask them what could you do better ~ Tim ReidClick To TweetHe knows marketing inside and out and makes it his business to stay up to date with the latest marketing trends from around the world.
Tim is an author of the Boomerang effect book, which covers why being helpful in your marketing returns more customers and makes you more money. And he also hosts Australia’s #1 marketing show “Small Business Big Marketing.”
In this episode, we will cover:
- [00:22] About the episode and Tim Reid
- [04:06] Tim explains his lifelong love of marketing, how he previously worked in advertising but wanted to specialize in marketing more and help smaller businesses
- [04:49] How can creative people become better at business?
- [05:57] Look to businesses that you like and see what you can learn from them
- [06:00] What makes the customer experience the best?
- [08:12] Be sympathetic towards the customer and understand how your client feels about buying from you
- [09:02] In which areas of the business structure can we improve our customer experience?
- [09:37] Tim shows the ‘Moments of Truth’ customer experience exercise
- [10:53] Make sure that every Moment of Truth is a good experience so that the customer comes back
- [11:55] Tim gives an example that by using simple steps, the overall outcome leads to an extremely satisfying customer experience
- [12:53] How to measure your customer experience
- [14:24] Where is the border between helping for free and serving for money?
- [14:41] Reflect on how it feels to give and be given things, and how that connects with those things coming back round in the future
- [15:52] The first step to be helpful to your clients is to find out every question and problem they have
- [16:55] How does being helpful make more money?
- [17:32] How do you find the balance between serving and over giving?
- [19:18] What mistakes do people make when working with clients?
- [20:52] Two things you can put and do in your strategy to create a great customer experience
- [21:44] What small third step you can do right now
- [23:13] Where to find Tim
- [23:36] For the show notes go to marinabarayeva.com and subscribe to the Marketing for Creatives show.
3 Steps towards creating a great customer experience:
- Step 1: Map out every time a customer comes into contact with you and how you can make that a great experience
- Step 2: Identify and create a list as of now of every question you’ve ever been asked in your business and go about answering each of those questions either in a blog post or your other media channels
- Step 3: Smile, make little steps and take some time for yourself to enjoy each milestone you achieve in your business
Pin the quotes on your Pinterest:
Download podcast transcript [PDF] here:
Resources from this interview:
- Learn more about Tim Reid on smallbusinessbigmarketing.com
- Listen to Tim’s podcast Small Business Big Marketing
- Follow Tim Reid on Twitter
Connect with Marina Barayeva:
- marinabarayeva.com
- Follow Marina on Instagram
- Follow Marina on Twitter
A Great Customer Experience: How to Make Your Business Memorable – Interview transcription
Marina Barayeva:
Please tell us more about yourself. What brought you to marketing and made you stay for years there?
Tim Reid:
I went from school into university where I studied marketing about 80 years ago (Laughter), not quite 80 years ago but it’s all I’ve ever done. I studied it at university.
I left university and got a job in Australia’s biggest advertising agency where I spent 10 years looking after some really big brands like Gillette, Mercedes Benz and Dulux.
I then realized that I was only considered an advertising guy and I needed to become a marketing guy, so I got a job as the marketing manager of Flight Center, which is a very big travel agency in Australia, and became a marketing guy.
Then I realized after about 15 years of working in corporate that it was actually small business owners that I have a particular love and respect for. I decided I’d start my own small business and that was a marketing consultancy.
To promote that marketing consultancy, I started a podcast called The Small Business Big Marketing show. That was about eight years ago. That podcast became very popular very quickly.
All of a sudden, I was getting asked to speak at conferences and other opportunities were coming my way.
I closed my marketing consultancy and now, eight years later, I have a podcast. It’s the first business marketing podcast in Australia. It’s very much cash flow positive. I speak at a lot of conferences. I do a lot of radio. And I continue to help small business owners with their marketing because that’s my true passion.
Marina Barayeva:
That’s fantastic.
I do really like your book about customer experience, customer service and all your speeches about that.
Let’s get to the common situation. You are in small business and there are other entrepreneurs or small business owners who provide a sort of service to people.
It seems that everything is okay, but let’s think that if the client would get a great experience, they theoretically should be excited to tell about your service or business to their friends so your business could get the referrals.
They will share more about it around, they will go back to use this service again, but none of this happens.
I come to you and say, “Tim, you’re so smart. Tell me what to do.”
Tim Reid:
(Laughter) I like it when you come to me and say I’m so smart. I’ve very honored.
What you’re pointing out there is that a lot of business owners, and we’re talking to your audience, they’re creative types, they’re one, two people show. They’re probably very good at designing things or creating things. They’re probably not very good at business. That’s life. That seems to happen a lot.
However, when you become a creative person who is not only very good at being creative but also being very good at business, that’s when you can start to make a lot of money. That’s when you can start to charge what you’re worth, when you can start to go, “I really love what I do.”
As a starting point to do that, you can do two things. You can go partner up with someone who has the business skills and the business acumen and let them worry about it. You might not want to give away equity in your business or you might not have the money to employ someone to do that. So that means you need to do it yourself which is not ideal, but that’s life.
What I would do, the very first thing, is to reflect and look around you to businesses that you really like dealing with. Everyone of us has got a café that we go to, a hotel that we stay at, an airline that we fly with, a vet that we use. Whatever it is, think about those businesses in your life that you think, “I love how they treat me. They respect me. They make my life easier. They make it easy for me to do business with them.”
And ask yourself what can I learn from them? That’s a really good place to start because there are a whole lot of things that we can talk about but I don’t want to complicate it for your listeners. I want to say, you’re a business. You offer a product or a service. Offer it in a way that people are going to enjoy buying, and to do that, look at other businesses.
That’s a good place to start, Marina.
Marina Barayeva:
Tim, you were talking about several different businesses like you can go anywhere and look at any business and we have our businesses.
In your opinion, what makes the customer experience the best? If you look to other businesses, what can we take from them to our business?
Tim Reid:
When a business understands me.
For example, when I was the marketing manager at this travel agency, there were a number of different mindsets that customers would come to us with.
Travel is pretty exciting, right? You’ve travelled a lot. You go to book a trip, you’re feeling excited, aren’t you? Therefore, the travel agent should recognize that this person’s excited, they’re about to book a trip to Hawaii. Understand that they’re excited; they want to book the best trip possible. Make it exciting for them.
You may also find that person who’s coming into your travel agency is actually having to book some travel because a relative has passed away and they’ve got to go and travel to the funeral.
Find out. Therefore, as a travel agent you’re not going to be excited. You are going to be empathetic, sympathetic towards them. Find out and understand your client.
It’s a really good place to start: understand how your client feels about buying from you, about buying from your industry. Are they excited? Are they confused? Are they annoyed?
Once you understand the problems that your clients have then go about offering the simplest, most elegant solution that solves those problems.
If you do that, the clients going to love you. They’re going to go, “This business is so good. I love dealing with them.” And they’re going to tell other people about you.
Marina Barayeva:
In which areas of the business structure can we improve our customer experience? We know about our clients, what they want, what they need, and we need to put that experience somewhere.
In which stages would you improve that, or everywhere?
Tim Reid:
Everywhere, totally. I’ll give you a couple of examples. One is just from a marketing point of view, what we call the customer experience. You’ve heard that term before, have you?
Marina Barayeva:
Yes, of course.
Tim Reid:
Of course. She’s a marketer, she says.
With customer experience, every business owner listening should do this. Draw a line on an A3 piece of paper, give yourself some room, or a whiteboard.
On the left-hand side of that line is the first moment a client or a customer or a prospect comes into contact with you, the first time they find you. It might be at a networking event, on your website, on your social media, wherever.
Then on the right-hand side of that line, that is the point of post purchase, after they finished buying from you and they’re enjoying your service or product.
In the middle and all along that line are all these points where you have the opportunity to interact with them. The first email you send them, the first phone call, the first time you meet them, the first time they come into your office, an opportunity to send them a birthday card, a Christmas gift.
All these little points along the way, which I call ‘Moments of Truth’. A moment of truth is when someone, a customer decides will I continue dealing with this business or will I move on to their competition?
What you want to do is make sure every single one of those Moments of Truth is a good experience. It doesn’t have to be earth shattering. It just needs to be something where people go, “That was good. I really enjoyed that. It was my birthday. That business sent me a card. I walked into their shop. They greeted me by my first name. I came to have a meeting with them and they remembered that I like a black coffee.”
All of a sudden the customer is going to go, “Heck, what are those people? They’re good people. They’re looking after me.” That will allow you to create a fantastic customer experience.
I’ll give you a second example Marina. That timeline I gave you is a very long timeline from the time they find you to the time after they buy from you, but you can have customer experiences within a 60-minute period.
I know an electrical company, an electrician business where every time an electrician goes into someone’s house they have to tick off a 21-step customer mantra. The 21-step customer mantra includes things like arrive five minutes early because that’s polite. Don’t arrive 15 minutes late because that’s rude. Step one in the customer mantra. When you arrive at someone’s home, don’t park in their driveway, park out the front. When you enter the home, take your shoes off.
All those little steps by themselves are not that interesting but added up they make for a very good customer experience. There are a couple of exercises that your listeners could do in their business.
Marina Barayeva:
Tim, when you try to get your customer experience better, how do you measure that? How do you measure it was a good move or it wasn’t really effective for people?
If you add little details like serving coffee during your service or something like this, it’s a small thing but how would you know if it’s good for people or not?
Tim Reid:
It’s a good question.
You and I, we’re creative types so I’m going to talk qualitatively, not quantitatively because I don’t like numbers.
I measure things with my heart, when people say, “Yes, we love that.” I like to measure things when someone says, “You know, Tim? I really enjoy dealing with you.” When they send me a testimonial. When someone calls me and says, “Listen, such and such has asked me to call you because they really enjoyed working with you.” To me, that’s when I know that I’m doing good.
Repeat purchase and referrals are two of the great ways that as business owners we know that we’re doing good.
That’s how I measure.
Marina Barayeva:
That’s interesting.
When I looked at your writings and you mention this online, you often say, “I help. Helpful marketing.”
What does it mean for you, Tim? Where is the border between helping for free and serving for money?
Tim Reid:
Good question. I’m a very big advocate of being helpful in marketing. But before I explain it at a marketing level, I’ll explain it at a personal, human level because being helpful is a good thing.
You, and anyone listening to this, reflect on the last time you were helpful and reflect on the last time you were helped. It feels good when you think about those times.
Would you agree that it makes you feel good?
Marina Barayeva:
Of course.
Tim Reid:
Yes. Obvious question but important to understand.
When we are helpful, it releases dopamine into our bloodstream. Dopamine’s the feel-good drug. Excuse me, I’ll be a little bit crass here but when we eat chocolate and have sex, not at the same time but dopamine is released.
I’m about to introduce you to a marketing strategy that not only tastes good, it feels fantastic. That’s the truth because being helpful in marketing is also a very good thing.
In order to do that, anyone listening who owns a business, ask yourself, how can I be more helpful to my clients?
The very first step would be to identify every question, every problem your customers have and go about answering them:
- in your marketing
- in the copy on your website
- in YouTube videos that you do
- in blog posts that you write
- in sales letters that you write
If you identify and acknowledge the problem that a customer is having, like for example right now we’re being listened to by creative types. I know for a fact that those creative types are struggling to market their business because they’re very good creatively, but they struggle with the running of a business.
Right now we’ve got their heads nodding by acknowledging that. And now my solution to that is to say to them start to solve the problems of your client. Be helpful, and you will have a successful marketing strategy.
Marina Barayeva:
That sounds fantastic.
Tim, you said in your book that being helpful returns more customers and makes more money.
How does it exactly help people bring in more money?
Tim Reid:
Because all of a sudden, you’re building a business that people like to deal with, so you’re going to get repeat purchase.
By being helpful, people are going to A, enjoy you and B, tell others about you. That’s what you want, right?
Marina Barayeva:
Exactly.
Tim Reid:
In so doing, you’re going to get more business.
Marina Barayeva:
Going a little bit back to the balance, where to find the line between serving and over giving.
Sometimes people think like, “If I give you everything, I help you all the time, why would you use my service because I’m making all of this for free?”
Tim Reid:
Yes. Look, I hear that often but I don’t agree with it.
If you give away your knowledge, which is what I’m suggesting you do, like you’re doing on this podcast and like I’m doing with you. If you do that, people are going to go, “I like what Marina’s about. I like what Tim’s about. I’m going to look more into them and see what they can offer me.” That’s the way it works.
People buy from people. They don’t buy from businesses. They buy from people, particularly in the services industry. All of a sudden when you understand that, you’d be happy to give away your knowledge because it’s going to mean people are more attuned to you.
The reality is people don’t need to use my services. If they listened to all my podcasts, read my book, read all my blog posts over at smallbusinessbigmarketing.com, they are not going to need to employ me to speak at their conference. But they do because they like dealing with me. That’s just how it works.
Marina Barayeva:
Of course, you’re an awesome person. Everyone wants to deal with you, not just reading your blog or listening to podcast (laughter.)
Tim Reid:
That will be the same for you and anyone listening who adheres to this idea of being helpful.
Marina Barayeva:
When people work with customers, what mistakes do they make with the service or working with clients?
Tim Reid:
The fact that they’re not understanding how a customer is feeling. Not being empathetic towards the customer. Sometimes you can over service a customer, sometimes you can underservice a customer. Sometimes we forget to ask the customer what do you think? How do you like dealing with us? Ring a customer. Ring your top three customers.
Here’s another thing for everyone listening to do. Finish listening to Marina and I and share this podcast three times with your best friends and then ring your top three customers and ask them what could you do better.
Don’t ask them whether you like dealing with me. Ask them what could you do better. Ask for honest feedback. Have a thick skin. Listen to what they’ve got to say and act on what their advice is if you like it.
Marina Barayeva:
It’s going to be asking and listening, asking and listening.
Tim Reid:
Ask and listen, ask and listen, totally. Just like you are.
Marina Barayeva:
Exactly.
If you would put those into the strategy, what are the three steps our listeners could begin with to create the great customer experience in their business?
Tim Reid:
I’d do the timeline, that one first of all. Map out every time a customer comes into contact with you and how you can make that a great experience.
I would identify and create a list as of now of every question you’ve ever been asked in your business and go about answering each of those questions either in a blog post or in what I call a knowledge center which is a part of your website where you can list all the questions you’ve ever been asked and answer them. You could create a YouTube channel to do that
Those two things are a really good place to start. I’d almost like to leave it at two because again, we’re talking to talking to people who are one or two people shows. They might not have time to do any more than that.
Marina Barayeva:
What small step can they already do today? Little things right after they finish listening to the show.
Tim Reid:
Smile.
Marina Barayeva:
(Laughter) smile to the client.
Tim Reid:
Pat themselves on their back and remind themselves that they’re doing a really good job because it can be lonely being a small business owner. We don’t spend enough time thinking about and congratulating ourselves on the wins that we’ve had or the little things that we’ve done in the last day, week, month, year, that we think, “That was really cool what I did. Well done to me.” Do that.
The fact that they’re listening to this podcast means that they are interested in personal development and are interested in growing themselves and being better business owners. I think that is a good thing and they should do more of that. Listen to your show, listen to my show, the Small Business Big Marketing Show, and they’re on their way to creating a really good little business, I think.
Marina Barayeva:
Fantastic. Thank you so much, Tim.
Everybody listen to this show and Small Business Big Marketing.
Tim Reid:
(Laughter) love it.
Marina Barayeva:
Tim, share with us how can we connect with you and find out more about you.
Tim Reid:
Sure. Go to smallbusinessbigmarketing.com. That would be a really great place to start. Come and say hi to me on Twitter @TimboReid. T-I-M-B-O-R-E-I-D.
Marina Barayeva:
Fantastic. Thank you so much for being on the show today.
Tim Reid:
Good on you Marina. Thank you for having me and well done on your podcast.
Marina Barayeva is an international speaker and coach who helps women entrepreneurs become recognized experts and confidently sell their services. She is also a TEDx speaker, has presented to audiences in Asia and North America, and has been featured in such media as ArtPeople, CCTV, China Radio International, and others.
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