Purple Goldfish: Lessons from Stan Phelps

Last week, we had an awesome workshop with Stan Phelps, author of What's Your Purple Goldfish?: How to Win Customers and Influence Word of Mouth. It is about creating memorable customer experiences and driving a referral engine for your business. The book is a must read for founders, marketers, salespeople...anyone who cares about delivering an exceptional customer experience and driving more revenue. We found this workshop so informative, we wanted to share with you a few tips that Stan shared with us so that you, too, can deliver lagniappe. Instead of focusing all your efforts on acquiring customers, make sure to focus on retaining your existing customers. It's pretty common to hear about companies going above and beyond to win a big prospect or to smooth over a problem situation. But what about delighting the customers who've already bought your product or who pay you every month for your service? These are the companies who create a truly memorable experiences and build brand loyalty. Ever been to a Doubletree hotel and gotten that warm chocolate chip cookie upon checking in? Or are you one of the lucky few to win one of MailChimp's awesome giveaways? The purple goldfish rule: Always give more than what is expected. The key to getting to purple goldfish status can be summed up with the acronym R.U.L.E.S: Relevancy: whatever you do needs to be valued by your customer. It needs to create added value, not added crap. Find out what motivates your customer- it's probably not a koozie (but, maybe it is!)Unexpected: leverage surprise correctly. The best gifts are those that are unexpected. Limited: pick something that's rare and hard to find or hard to copy. Again, it's probably not a koozie, but it also doesn't have to be expensive. Wufoo sends handwritten thank you notes to their customers- construction paper, stickers, and all. Expression: it's not so much as what you give, but how you give it. Your gift needs to come across as authentic, a sign that you care about the relationship. Sticky: it needs to pass the "water cooler test" - part of the reason you're doing it is because you want people to talk about it. It needs to be on the tip of their tongue-- it shows up on a Facebook/Twitter status, they tell their buddies, etc. There are tons of valuable nuggets of information found in Stan's book, including thousands of examples (literally, he investigated thousands of cases) to learn from. Are you still wondering what lagniappe is? Better read the book!