This article was written by Nabil Ould-Brahim.
The goal of a service provider is to impress your customers so much that they become raving fans that refer you to the ends of the universe. Today I’m going to talk about how to wow them while you are retargeting them to purchase a service.
Specifically, I’m going to talk about the major improvements that United Airlines has made and how you can leverage a similar strategy to WOW your customers.
Let me guess, you’re reading this and saying “United… Like the airline United? The one with all the bad press?”
Yes, that is entirely who I am talking about.
You should always remember that regardless of the business or individual, you can always learn something from them on how to make your business better.
Typically, I gloss over their emails and read about 10 words before archiving them. This time, however, I read the entire email. At the end of it, I felt proud, excited, happy, and – most importantly for United – I was looking at my next trip and which flights I should book.
What did they write and how do I leverage that for my business?
United took an interesting approach and sent out an email to their members letting them know that they have over 2,000 hours of shows and movies aboard their planes.
Now, that doesn’t sound impressive, however it is all in the delivery.
This is how they started their email: my 2019 journey was on show.
They then showed my airline status level, how many flights, how many miles, and how many segments I have flown this year.
Then the curtains went up….
Looking at my travel time closely, they provided me with cool and interesting statistics.
- What was my longest flight this year?
- How many miles was my longest flight?
- How many segments was my longest itinerary?
The funniest part was how they drew attention to booking another flight just so you can watch more show and movies:
United has over 2,000 hours of shows and movies available on board. You’ve flown 9.4 hours this year so you still have 1,990.6 hours of content to watch. What will you watch next?
How interesting…
Then they gave me the opportunity to rave about it by providing a ready-made graphic that I could share on social media with their custom hashtag.
They then revealed what their top three movies watched by all passengers are, followed with the ability to vote for which classic movie they are going to bring on the plane.
One of the biggest learning lesson we as service providers need to take in is to track everything!
Without the ability to keep track of our customer’s purchases and how they use our services, you miss out on the opportunity to WOW them with their own interactions.
United leveraged their statistics and information to cheer successful purchases in a way that made the reader happy and looking forward to their next trip.
Are you tracking what your customers are purchasing?
Are you tracking how your customers are interacting with their purchases?
For online programs, are you tracking at what time of the day each course is being tracked?
If you knew at what time of the day a customer interacted with your course, you could send them an email just before their regular time and have it stylized to similar outdoor lighting conditions.
How are you WOW-ing your customers today?
If you do not have these stats in place, there are automated methods to tracking this information by leveraging CRMs and specialized analytic software.
