| A Little Wit for a Lot of Delight |
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By: Mike Bush |
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 For your clients, it’s no longer about customer “satisfaction.” Customers “content” with the offerings they receive are officially customers your clients could be in jeopardy of losing.
Today, “satisfaction” has been replaced by “delight.” And as a flack, it’s your job to find new ways to help your clients delight their customers.
Of course, where there’s a change in role, there’s an opportunity, and a simple secret that PR folks should be aware of is one that makes our industry particularly suited to taking on this challenge:
A little extra thinking goes a long way.
By way of example, it seems fair to say that, on the scale of organizations people are excited about dealing with, the DMV (in New York), or the DOT (in Texas) rank somewhere between “going to the dentist for a root canal” and waiting for the cable guy to show up “sometime between 2:00 and 6:00.” However, our own Shawn Paul Wood had this little exchange with the Texas DOT last week:
From SPW, a funny little Tweet:
Dear @TxDOT: Wish me luck. I'm about to tell this highway that it is adopted.
SPW’s a funny guy (ask him, he’ll tell you). But, funny-guy aside, most folks probably expect that tweet to just sit out there on the web. However, the Texas DOT took it a step further. In response, the DOT had this to say:
@shawnpaulwood Awesome! Good luck--I trust it'll be in good hands! :) We appreciate your service.
Simple, witty, and it caught the attention of all of SPW’s followers. A couple extra seconds of thinking it through, and it seems like most of SPW’s followers who saw this think a little more highly of the Texas DOT.
There are companies out there who specialize in finding ways to delight their customers. On a personal level, the Price Assurance from Orbitz basically ensured that I will be a customer for life (someone booked the same flight my wife and I are scheduled to fly at a significantly lower price, and Orbitz let us know and is refunding us the difference...no hassle at all).
But, for companies where customer service isn’t usually what people think of, it’s our job as flacks to find ways to delight the customers of our clients. And sometimes, all it takes is a witty response.
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Mike Bush is a PR and Marketing freelancer with more than a dozen years of experience in the field. Find him on and connect Twitter @mikebush or at www.mikebush.nyc.
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