A tribute to old Jeeps.

A few weeks ago, our friend Kim Banks down at Full Circle PR asked me if I could help her figure out how to install a Sirius / XM radio in her husband’s Jeep. After signing up for the service and buying a unit on sale, she planned to borrow her husband’s car and return it to him with the satellite service to surprise him. After hearing rumors that I had tinkered with Jeeps she wanted to know if I could help her surprise her husband with the gift.

After some research I determined that in order for her to get it back to her husband on time she would probably need to take it to a professional. A few weeks passed and I didn’t hear anything more about it.

One morning when Kim was in the Dead Dog Diner I asked her how things had turned out with the surprise and where she had taken the car. I was shocked - she said that she had actually given up on it, but through a turn of events, was now a fully devoted fan of Sirius / XM. Here’s what happened.

When Kim found out what it would take to get the unit installed and how much it would cost, she realized that it would take too long and she wouldn’t be able to surprise her husband. She was also frustrated that the cost of installation was a lot more than she had bargained for. So she decided to scrap the whole thing.

She called Sirius / XM and told them she wanted to cancel the service. When they asked her why, she told them the story. She thought it would be a great gift for her husband, who loves sports and news radio, but the frustration of actually getting it up and running was too much, even if she admittedly should have done more research. She was going to find another gift for her husband.

And Sirius / XM stepped up to the plate and seized the opportunity to stand by their service and remove the barriers that had turned a potential customer away.

They told her:

“You know what - we think you’ll really, really like Sirius, and we’re sorry for the confusion about the installation. If you’re still willing to give it a shot, we’ll send you a free-installation voucher so you can take it to an authorized dealer to get taken care of. Also, we don’t want you to be paying for something you’re not using - so we just won’t charge you for the first month of your service.”

Kim said,

“They treated me like a customer before I was a customer, and now we’re huge fans. They were confident that we’d like the service, and they were right - and when they found out we were having trouble, they just made everything so easy.”

Kim’s husband swears by satellite radio now - it really was the perfect gift for him. So perfect, in fact, that he’s giving all of this CDs to Kim because he doesn’t use them much any more. And Sirius won them by treating them as the valuable customers they had the potential to be, even though they hadn’t even used their satellite radio yet.

*Sirius / XM is a pretty interesting company. Their history has been rocky to say the least, including a near-brush with bankruptcy, a controversial merger and a poorly-received iPhone app launch. And when you have a rough history, it’s not surprising that you’ll bend over backwards to gain more subscribers. Or maybe they’re starting to figure things out.

Invest in vocabulary?

Yes.

Kyle Bylin, the associate editor at hypebot, wrote a very interesting article on “True Fans and Outsiders” as they relate to bands and the music industry. Kyle points out that language is a vital component of community - committed cores of fans

…use language to help create their culture, but if you take away or change their sacred words, over time the tribe’s sense of identity slowly starts to erode.

We experience this every day, much of the time without even noticing it. We have a certain vernacular with our loved ones, our friend groups and our co-workers. But lots of companies see the importance in it as well - Starbucks refers to employees as “partners” because they want their workers to take ownership in the success of the company. Chick-fil-A employees make constant use of the phrase “my pleasure” because they want customer service to be at the top of their minds.

So it got me thinking - if some of this happens naturally among employees and customers - what would happen if a company not only listened to the vocabulary being use by those groups, but invested in it? Intentionally gave the people who interact with them a sense of belonging, simply in the language they use?

Are there any stories you know of companies making this type of vocabulary-investment?

This blog post was inspired by a with Kira Wampler, Word of Mouth/Social Marketing Leader at Intuit Inc.

What do I care? Why should I care? What do your customers care about?

For the company that doesn’t, “care” is a four-letter word. For the company that does, “care” is a big word. Huge even. Because when you care, emotion enters into the equation. For some companies, emotion is a scary thing. Because emotion doesn’t show up as a line-item on a P&L report. Emotion can make things very sticky. And emotion is unpredictable.

But caring can be your greatest asset. Because when you allow your employees to care about their jobs, care about what happens to their fellow employees and care about their customers, there’s a shift in culture. I guarantee that when you walk in the doors of a company or have your first interaction with them online, you can tell the difference between a company that cares and a company that doesn’t care.

Yes, we all care about the bottom line. Because, like the Tequila Shots book says, we can’t make a difference if we cease to exist. But that’s a different kind of caring. I’m talking about the caring that comes when the times get tough. The kind of caring that comes with making sure you’re doing everything within your power to solve a person’s problem - even if they are a chronic complainer. And the caring that comes from believing that your customer’s success is your success.

So if you don’t care, then it’s going to be obvious to your employees and customers. And since love (or the lack of it) is a circular transaction, guess what? I guarantee that they aren’t going to care about you either. And good luck with that.

Who’s heard of Robin Dunbar? For those of you who haven’t, his most widely known work as an anthropologist is called “Dunbar’s Number,” which proposes that the ceiling of ’stable interpersonal relationships’ that the average person can maintain is 150. Though his initial work studied groups of people offline, he has recently moved his research online to study the same principle in social networks.

Aside from being thought-provoking in and of itself, the variety of responses that Dunbar’s research has drawn is also interesting. Some people use the measure to decry the online frenzy of friends and followers, others use their idea of the massive influence of social media to discredit it. Many people approach their interpretation of the number through personal networking experience and some have even made it their goal to ‘beat’ the number.

One thing, however, seems to be consistent among both supporters and critics: the number of deep, meaningful, trusting relationships that you can have, either online or offline, is a much smaller figure than gigantic number of acquaintances you can achieve.

And I think many people (and companies for that matter) could be missing one of the most important lessons in the conversation. On some level, it doesn’t matter as much whether Dunbar’s number validates or invalidates connections in social networking, it’s a reminder that you can cultivate a core group of fans that have a vested interest in you.

It begs the question, what are you doing to fascinate, inspire, reward and engage that smaller number of people who have the closest connection to your company or brand?

Maybe you’re not in a formal ambassador program or even consider yourself an ambassador of, well, anything really. But when you start thinking about it, you might be surprised that you choose or not choose to be an ambassador every day.

Case in point, if you’re a runner and like to run outside in public places (like downtown), more than likely you’ve been stopped and asked directions by pedestrians or even drivers. At that moment, you have a decision to make. Because in that moment, you can choose to be an ambassador for your city. You can choose to take the time to stop and get them where they need to go and wish them well on their way. You just became an ambassador. You just gave that person a “customer experience.”

My point is that you don’t have to be involved in a formal program to be considered an ambassador. You don’t even have to be a loud and proud evangelist to be considered an ambassador. We make decisions everyday when we interact with others. And many times, brands are a part of those interactions. So take the time to become aware of your conversations. Because those are the same ones your customers are having. And each and every one of those are an opportunity to make both your lives better.