“Making love to customers is not a campaign, but a lifestyle,” says Saul in his talk. What does he mean? “Making love to your customers is not something that you can do for a certain amount of time–it is a company commitment. You can’t run this like an ad campaign–customers will sense when it is over and leave you. Over-exceeding expectations means treating your customers better than any other company relationship your customer has ever had.” This is something the Nordstrom executive or a manager at the Four Seasons would smile knowingly and nod at.
Saul’s company, Freshbooks.com, where he’s Chief of Magic, spends time, effort, people, and resources on creating relationships with customers. The central assumption in these relationships is that Freshbooks employees love their customers–even if the customers have something bad to say. Saul considers this a great opportunity to turn a detractor into someone who realizes how much Freshbooks loves him or her.