Everywhere you go, people feel unappreciated. Another day, another dollar at the job. I spend thousands of dollars with these people, and what have they done for me? “Nobody even knows I’m here.”
You may have heard these sentiments. You maybe have even thought these sentiments.
Despite the much-heralded connections in our electronic lives, it’s hard to feel appreciated by your remote control, your mouse, or your touchpad.
Just for fun, and in light of Bing’s “Bing It On” search engine challenge, I binged and googled “people feel under appreciated.” The result? Google yielded 3.7 million hits, and Bing 2.18 million hits.
Anyway, that’s a lot of under appreciation. Many of the responses are articles that are supposed to help the person feeling under appreciated (as if there’s something wrong with them) and of course no one appreciates a whiner or someone who needs to be “buffed out” every nine seconds.
But, from a marketing perspective, if customers feel under appreciated they might go someplace that appreciates them more. What can anyone do to make their customers feel more appreciated?
Communicate it. Specifically, amazon.com gives away mp3s. My system isn’t set up to get into amazon’s mp3 appreciation program, as I have a Mac, and there’s itunes to consider and all that. But, I’m glad they’re trying.
My insurance agent sends me a card on my birthday. Is that why I stay with her agency? No, she also gives me a great rate. But it doesn’t hurt.
Retailers hand out affinity cards that get the customer a discount for so many items purchased. That’s cool, but what if one day they just laid something on you just to say thanks. You’d think they were up to something.
Quite possibly, the best business you never heard of or have forgotten about is “Home Grocer.” This was a food delivery chain that flourished during the dot com era. Not only did Home Grocer deliver a cold six-pack to your door, their delivery guy wore plastic booties in the house so as not to drag any mud in, and they would just lay some fruit on you at no extra charge. (The marketing angle was to prove they could deliver cold, fresh fruit.)
Needless to say, I bought fruit and beer and meat from them, because everything was cold, fresh, and a little bit of it was free.
And that goes a long way in an under appreciated world.
