Cashing In On Word Of Mouth Referrals

The greatest gift your customer can give you is to say nice things about you to their friends. It’s free of charge and it’s as honest as it gets. Achieving this free form of advertising is not so easy to control. It’s about you yourself being sincere and honest as well. Want them to talk about you? Give them something to talk about. Give them something unexpected.

Sometime surprises are a good thing. My brother ran his own Air BnB for a time. Check out time was firmly set at 11am. As I have talked about in previous posts, reviews are also important in today’s mobile business world. In the case of Air BnB ‘Reviews’ are woven into the whole fabric that makes it work. Air BnB hosts strive to become what is known as ‘Super hosts’. This level of success is achieved largely through good reviews.

Getting back to check out time. This happens at 11am sharp. There are guests coming after and there needs to be time for a complete turnover. There are times however when there might be a one or two day gap in between bookings. Rather than let this opportunity just slip on by, my brother would make a point of telling the guests in his ‘check out’ text message to ”go ahead and take some extra time checking out. No rush as there’s no one checking in directly after you”.

This simple gesture of good will cost my brother nothing extra. But it always came up in the customer satisfaction reviews. In the hospitality industry people are used to being treated like Kings and Queens. That usually changes when the clock hits 11am and housekeeping knock at the door arrives.

The element of surprise. It sticks around longer in people’s minds than all the other details that were expected from the start.

Robert Ducharme is CEO of Routezilla, a one-of-a-kind Geography driven customer scheduling software that is designed for service companies who must visit customer locations and need to deliver top notch customer service. By asking the right questions of your customers Routezilla is able to offer fully automated customer service to your customers.

“The US on-demand home services sector currently stands at $600 billion. It has shown a steadfast growth during the pandemic and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 49% by 2021. Do you have the workflow methods in place to keep up.”

Robert Ducharme,CEO

Routezilla Software Corp.