How Marketing Can Improve Customer Satisfaction.

I love Southwest Airlines. Not because I have a thing for cattle calls. Not because I’m a sucker for the middle seat or a three-stop flight to Vegas. I love Southwest for the simple reason that, as a traveler, I know what to expect from them.

I’m not alone, by the way. Forbes just ranked Southwest at the top of its airline customer satisfaction survey. Again. And it wasn't a squeaker-- they beat the snot out of the other guys. What, you might wonder, is so satisfying about flying Southwest?

For years, Southwest ran a wickedly simple TV ad. On the screen, you see a pack of peanuts on a tray table. The announcer says, “At Southwest, this is what our meals look like. It’s also what our fares look like.” This ad clearly laid out what you could expect from Southwest: cheap fares and no bad airline food. And though the campaign has changed since then, the message hasn’t. (I couldn't find the ad before publishing, so post a link if you're able to hunt it down).

Southwest doesn’t claim to “know why you fly” Like American, or portray itself with fanciful cartoons like United—two airlines that are wallowing at the bottom of the satisfaction heap. Their marketing creates false expectations that the product can't live up to. And that leaves customers dissatisfied.

Southwest simply tells you the benefit of flying them, and delivers that benefit when you do. That’s how satisfied customers are created. And that’s exactly how smart marketing works.

I used to work on the advertising business for a global hotel chain. One day, a junior marketing manager came to us with a promotional project he felt would drive loads of wedding business to the hotel. The offer he wanted us to promote was this: have your wedding at our hotel, and we’ll pay for your honeymoon!

What a deal! What a steal! Who wouldn’t like the sound of that? An offer that terrific would surely drive traffic. Except… once we dug into the fine print, we learned it would be nearly impossible to qualify for the free honeymoon, and even if you did, the package itself was so lame that you’d probably take a pass.

In other words, the hotel chain could never meet the expectations set up by the marketing. That’s how dissatisfied customers are created. And that’s how bad marketing works.

We took our concerns to the young manager, who said, “That’s not my problem. My job is to get butts in the door.”

So we took our concerns to his boss in the C-Suite, who instantly killed the promotion and told him to come up with something they could actually deliver on. “We don’t make promises we can’t keep,” he said simply. Smart man.

The point to both these stories is that customer satisfaction is often tied directly to the claims you make in your marketing. So how can you use your marketing to create satisfied customers? Start by following these six simple rules.

1. Be true to what you can deliver.
Every ad you run is basically a promise to potential customers—we promise that if you do business with us, here’s what you’ll get. If they take you at your word and you deliver, you’ve built real trust, and they’ll likely come back for more. Break your promise, and they’ll feel cheated, and you’ll never see them again. You want it to be the best promise possible, but it has to be one that your business can keep.

2. Know what your strengths are, and sell them.
The hotel chain I worked for was brilliant at planning great weddings. After that silly promotion was killed, we recommended a campaign that focused on their skills at ensuring your wedding goes off without a hitch. It worked, and the eventual campaign was a great success. Sell what you’re best at, and you’ll always be able to meet expectations.

3. Don’t over-promise. Don’t under-promise. Just promise.
That wedding promotion (and a little common sense) tells us that over-promising is a surefire way to turn people off. But under-promising and attempting to over-deliver is a bad call, too. For one thing, an under-promise is never your most compelling message, so it won’t drive as much traffic. Moreover, those who do show up, and then have their expectations exceeded, will be fans only as long as you can keep exceeding them. That’s a real strain on your operation, and ultimately an unsustainable business model.

4. Remember your employees.
When you make a promise with your marketing, your marketing isn’t on the hook to deliver. Your employees are. So make sure you’ve got their buy-in, and that they have all the tools they need to make it happen.

5. Never forget that you’re selling an experience.
It starts from the moment they see or hear your ad, and it continues long after they’ve made a purchase. So make sure that you manage customer expectations every step of the way.

6. Follow up.
You don't have to wait for Forbes or JD Power to tell you how things are going. And one of the nicest things about small business is the close contact you tend to have with your customers. Take advantage of it. Run a simple "how we doing?" survey. Host a coffee with your best customers and have a round table chat. Most customers actually appreciate being asked, and enjoy the engagement they have with the business. So don't be shy in getting their feedback.

Let this be your mantra going forward: Make a promise. Keep it. Repeat.

It sounds simple because it is simple. And it’s the key to making customers happy: just deliver on what they expect from you.

Comments

[Achinta Mitra]

Great post! A refreshing and realistic point of view for those who think marketing is only eye candy with a clever headline.

[Steven]

Good ideas. I wonder about under-selling, escpecially in terms of, then, letting my customers sell me?

[Emil]

I always enjoy reading what you have to say. I first found your site after reading some of the answers you provided on Money.com and followed the trail back here.

You are dead on with Southwest. There is a book I read not too long ago that talked about how they focused on the end-user and what they really wanted:

A safe, cheap flight that is on time and structured their entire business around that, their marketing included.

Anyway, you're great. It's refreshing to see someone else with a similar outlook. Keep it coming!

[Anonymous Ad Guy]

Emil, Steven, and Anchita... thanks for the kind words. Always nice to read!

Steven asks a good question about how to get customers to do your selling for you. There's nothing like having a core group of loyalists out there spreading the word about your business, and it's important to take care of them, to make them feel engaged with the brand.

Look for a nice fat post on that subject in the near future.

And thanks again.

--AAG