Make Yourself Memorable

I think most people love receiving gifts and souvenirs of a most memorable experience. There are many ways to surprise and delight your customers and it rarely has to cost a lot of money. It's the thoughtfulness and appreciation that counts.

A friend recently told me a story of a flight on Emirates airlines. Of course they provided his children a little kit of activities to do during the very long flight, and, then they went beyond. They took photos of every child on the flight, put them in a little frame that had the flight number, route, pilot and attendants names and presented them to all before arrival. What a wonderful gesture of appreciation and a most memorable souvenir for a young child.

Is that something you could apply in your business?

I remember attending a conference of all of the executives in a most progressive organization. As we arrived for the three day session a photographer took shots of every participant as we registered, and many more shots through the sessions. At the conclusion of the conference our chairman presented an amazing slide show that featured every single one of the participants. Our take-way was a file of all of the presentations and also the incredibly memorable slide show. It's something I cherish from a most enlightening time in a very progressive organization.

What can you do to make every company event most memorable?

The more I talk to people about customer service the more I hear about the mindless and dysfunctional activities organizations do to alienate their customers. Take the telcos where customer 'churn' is a key issue. The typical approach to dealing with 'churn or turnover is to aggressively recruit new customers with new deals, ipods, gifts and whatever. Almost every single person I talk to is totally pissed as, being a loyal customer they not only don't get to take advantage of the deals for new subscribers, they never get any acknowledgement or appreciation for being a customer. How bizarre. So what creates the 'churn'?

What have you done to appreciate your current customers and make yourself memorable in their minds?

Create memories. Make yourself memorable!