The Super-Happy Customer

Published ini­tially on Idea Hunt.

I often think about the super-happy customer.

During my career, I’ve found that the best way to sell more is to make one cus­tom­er super-happy. Because then, and only then, will that cus­tom­er go out of their way to tell their friends.

In my not-so-sci­entif­ic estim­a­tion, a super-happy cus­tom­er will gen­er­ate at least one new customer.

So, what does this mean from a pub­lic rela­tions perspective?

Here we go:

The Super-Happy Customer

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The Super-Happy Customer

The secret to mak­ing cus­tom­ers super-happy is excel­lent pub­lic rela­tions. And the secret to great pub­lic rela­tions is com­mu­nic­a­tion.

Here’s why:

• Communication is used to build and main­tain relationships.
• Communication is used to set and man­age expectations.
• Communication man­ages feed­back and improves per­cep­tions, products, and services.
• Communication is used to scale and facil­it­ate growth.
• Communication is used to attract and qual­i­fy the right cus­tom­er base.
• Communication is used to attract and hire the best pro­fes­sion­als for any job.
• Communication is what lead­ers use to facil­it­ate great team­work and achieve results.
• Communication is what super-happy cus­tom­ers use to attract new customers.

Learn more: The Super-Happy Customer

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Super-Happy Mathematics

If my anec­dot­al obser­va­tions are rel­ev­ant to sci­ence, let me use basic math to expand on the idea of the super-happy customer.

Let’s assume that each cycle is one month. In the first month, you will have one cus­tom­er; in two months, you will have two. Cool.

But what if you could find a way to make these two new cus­tom­ers super-happy, too? In three months, four new cus­tom­ers per cycle. Then 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, etc.

The expo­nen­tial growth:

2^{[num­ber of months]}

According to my math, your com­pany will be Earth’s most prom­in­ent brand in a few years. Super-cool.

Super-Happy Challenges

Obviously, and for whatever reas­on, the above scen­ario rarely hap­pens. It’s safe to say that mak­ing cus­tom­ers super-happy is dif­fi­cult, espe­cially if you have many of them.

However, most of us don’t have mil­lions of customers.

Not for lack of try­ing, though. Making cli­ents super-happy without wast­ing profit mar­gins or enga­ging in altru­ist­ic pro bono is challenging.

And it gets worse.

Not all busi­nesses need “brand ambas­sad­ors” in the typ­ic­al sense, either. Coca-Cola sales will likely be closely tied to avail­ab­il­ity and being top-of-mind.

However, give me an ice-cold Coke Zero on a hot sum­mer day, and I’ll be a super-happy cus­tom­er. Otherwise, it would­n’t work for a suc­cess­ful glob­al brand like Coca-Cola.

Can I make my cus­tom­ers super-happy like that? Can you?

How Being “Customer-Centric” Won’t Suffice

“You just have to be customer-centric.”

Well, I don’t know. I like how Apple is focused on build­ing the best pos­sible products and is product-cent­ric. I also like how Google is value-cent­ric, and Amazon is availability-centric.

Also, I know of “cus­tom­er-cent­ric ” com­pan­ies, but few of their cus­tom­ers are going out of their way to pro­mote these brands.

Put anoth­er way: Being cus­tom­er-cent­ric might be great for a spe­cif­ic busi­ness, but it won’t ensure expo­nen­tial growth where each cus­tom­er refers to anoth­er in every cycle.

In the end, what mat­ters is that you can cre­ate a super-happy cus­tom­er at least occasionally.

Dodging the Honey Trap

One sure­fire way to cre­ate super-happy cus­tom­ers is to over-deliv­er (the same thing as under-charging).

As a juni­or PR con­sult­ant, I went this route. I inves­ted an insane amount of my time, often mak­ing my employ­ers and cli­ents super-happy. However, this approach was­n’t long-term sus­tain­able. Trading my chances of being super-happy was only an effi­cient short-term strategy.

It’s a honey trap.

If you over­deliv­er once, savvy cus­tom­ers will quickly come to expect this pos­it­ive curve from you. They expect you to deliv­er more value con­tinu­ously without pay­ing more for your efforts. And then some­thing, some­where, some­how, will break.

The key must be estab­lish­ing excel­lent pub­lic rela­tions without spend­ing the profit mar­gin or trad­ing away your chances of being super-happy and becom­ing true fans.

PR Resource: The Value Triangle

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The Value Triangle

Negotiate and man­age cli­ent expect­a­tions by learn­ing the Value Triangle:

If someone wants some­thing CHEAP and FAST, they can­’t ask for it to be GOOD.

If someone wants some­thing CHEAP and GOOD, they can­’t ask for it to be FAST.

If someone wants some­thing FAST and GOOD, they can­’t ask for it to be CHEAP.

Or send your cli­ent this link.
You’re wel­come.

“To sell well is to con­vince someone else to part with resources — not to deprive that per­son, but to leave him bet­ter off in the end.”
— Daniel H. Pink

Learn more: The Value Triangle: How To Manage Expectations

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PR Resources: The Support Clique

Social Group Sizes (For Social Brains)

How many social con­nec­tions you you com­fort­ably sus­tain? According to the social brain hypo­thes­is, lim­its exist. ¹Zhou WX, Sornette D, Hill RA, Dunbar RI. Discrete hier­arch­ic­al organ­iz­a­tion of social group sizes. Proc Biol Sci. 2005 Feb 22;272(1561):439 – 44.

“The ‘social brain hypo­thes­is’ for the evol­u­tion of large brains in prim­ates has led to evid­ence for the coe­volu­tion of neo­cor­tic­al size and social group sizes, sug­gest­ing that there is a cog­nit­ive con­straint on group size that depends, in some way, on the volume of neur­al mater­i­al avail­able for pro­cessing and syn­thes­iz­ing inform­a­tion on social rela­tion­ships.”
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences ²Zhou, X., Sornette, D., Hill, R. A., & M. Dunbar, R. I. (2005). Discrete hier­arch­ic­al organ­iz­a­tion of social group sizes. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 272(1561), … Continue read­ing

Scientific evid­ence sug­gests that people tend to organ­ise them­selves not in an even dis­tri­bu­tion of group sizes but in dis­crete hier­arch­ic­al social groups of more par­tic­u­lar sizes:

Alas, there seems to be a dis­crete stat­ist­ic­al order in the com­plex chaos of human relationships:

“Such dis­crete scale invari­ance could be related to that iden­ti­fied in sig­na­tures of herd­ing beha­viour in fin­an­cial mar­kets and might reflect a hier­arch­ic­al pro­cessing of social near­ness by human brains.“
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences ³Zhou, X., Sornette, D., Hill, R. A., & M. Dunbar, R. I. (2005). Discrete hier­arch­ic­al organ­iz­a­tion of social group sizes. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 272(1561), … Continue read­ing

Read also: Group Sizes (The Social Brain Hypothesis)