Chuck Mckay is back with some wisdom on customer serivce, word of mouth, and doing it right:
Gamblers, E-Mail, Religious Miracles, Word-of-Mouth, and Customer Delight |
1) Your customers will grow accustomed to your new offer, and consider it just part of the meal they're choosing when they enter your establishment. Delight fades quickly when the surprise goes away. What we need is a way to keep the surprise element high. For that, we turn to one of the fathers of behavioral psychology, Burrhus Frederic Skinner. B. F. Skinner created a branch of psychology known as operant conditioning. He demonstrated that when properly rewarded under specific conditions, living beings will change their voluntary behavior. At Harvard in the 1950s, Skinner created the "Skinner Box" to condition laboratory rats. The rats were taught to push a lever, and get a food pellet in return. Once they learned to feed themselves, Skinner split the rats into two groups. The first never got another pellet by pressing the lever. The second group got the reward sometimes, always following a pressing of the lever, but never at any predictable interval. The first group quickly stopped pushing the lever. The second group never did. We intuitively grasp the the actions of the first group. It's not so easy to understand the second, but its important that we do. Whether discussing lab rats or your customer base, the second group is where the money is. Do humans push levers? Absolutely. And the more random the reinforcement, the more unpredictable the payoff, the more frequently they will push. Watch someone feed quarters into a slot machine. Isn't the attraction of any form of gambling the incredible delight experienced by the gambler when surprised by a win? This tendency to keep pushing the lever also describes why the faithful keep praying for miracles. Every now and then, at random intervals, their prayers appears to be answered. And those folks who check e-mail multiple times a day, hoping that this time there will be something new? Yup. They're also still pushing the lever. Can you keep your customers pushing the lever? Yes, you can, provided that you keep the element of unpredictability intact.
Each of these word-of-mouth examples has two components: surprise, and delight. Delight wears off quickly when the surprise is gone. You must keep both of them active to make word-of-mouth work in your favor. One last thought: the next time a delighted customer needs these services, which restaurant, or carpet cleaner, or plumber, or advertising sales rep, or dry cleaner do you suppose will get the call? __________ Chuck McKay is a marketing consultant who helps customers discover, and choose your business. Questions about delivering on your customers expectations may be directed to ChuckMcKay@ChuckMcKayOnLine. |
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