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 aver­age gen­er­ate at least one new customer.

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

Some Super-Happy Mathematics

If there’s any sci­entif­ic rel­ev­ance to my per­son­al obser­va­tions what­so­ever, allow me to expand on the idea of the super-happy cus­tom­er a bit fur­ther — using simple maths.

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 eight, then 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, and so on. 

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.

Making Customers Super-Happy is Difficult

Obviously, and for whatever reas­on, the above scen­ario rarely hap­pens. It’s safe to say that it’s dif­fi­cult to make cus­tom­ers super-happy, 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 are likely to be much more 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 glob­al and suc­cess­ful 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 how they’re product-cent­ric. And I kind of 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 have some sort of capa­city to cre­ate a super-happy cus­tom­er at least every once in a while.

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 per­son­al time — which often made both my employ­ers and my cli­ents super-happy. This approach was­n’t long-term sus­tain­able, how­ever. Trading my chances of being super-happy was only an effi­cient short-term strategy.

It’s a honey trap.

If you over-deliv­er once, savvy cus­tom­ers will quickly come to expect this pos­it­ive curve from you. Without pay­ing more for your efforts, they expect you to con­tinu­ously deliv­er more and more value. And then some­thing, some­where, some­how, will break. 

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

But how?

The Answer is… Communication

Several years into my pro­fes­sion­al career, I finally figured it out. I figured out the secret of mak­ing cus­tom­ers super-happy.

And this secret turned out to be a cent­ral irony.

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

The cent­ral irony here is that, giv­en what I do for a liv­ing, I prob­ably should’ve figured this one out quite a bit sooner.

Here’s how:

So, there it is. Excellent com­mu­nic­a­tion is the MVP of cre­at­ing super-happy cus­tom­ers as long as your deliv­ery is good enough.