My sophomore year of college, I got hired as a barista at Starbucks Coffee Company. Day one on the job, I was told:
We are in the people business, serving coffee – and not the other way around.
Everyday when I showed up for work, I was there to create connections with the customers – to see them not as an order to be processed or a latte to be made, but as a human being who was seeking an experience, a memory, a conversation.
A regular customer once shared with me, as I swept the lobby on a busy Sunday afternoon, that before she’d moved to our small town of Walla Walla, she’d worked directly for Howard Schultz at Starbucks Corporate Headquarters. Right before Howard stepped down as CEO in 2000, she noticed a visible change in him. When pressed, he confided that he was discouraged he no longer knew the first names of the partners he saw in the hallways of HQ. He didn’t feel like he was in the people business anymore.
Perhaps you know the feeling.
You started your business because you had a dream that people’s lives would be better because of your product, because of your service, because they walked through the doors of your establishment. You might have owned a bakery, or a print shop, or a consulting service, but you were in the people business.
You personally greeted every customer by name, you sent handwritten thank you cards and a meaningful little gifts on their birthday.
As you’ve gotten bigger, those connections are harder to make. The laws of physics prevail, and you cannot be in more than one place at one time.
But what if you could package the essence of your customer connections and deliver them in a different way? What if you started showing up on time for dinner with your family, made it to happy hour with your friends, had time for the long weekend yoga retreat?
Today’s customer is increasingly engaged online, and many not only want but expect businesses to connect with them in the digital space. Through marketing automation technology, you can effectively say hello to every new customer, greet them by name, suggest personalized products and services that will make their life better, and yes, even send them a little something on their birthday, without working 80 hour work weeks and sacrificing your own humanity.
Are you taking full advantage of your email marketing platform? The tools within your current point of sale system? Your customer relationship management software?
You being this busy is a good thing. It’s a sign that your dream of making peoples’ lives better has come true.
The investment you make today in leveraging marketing automation technology more effectively will certainly save you time in the future, but it will also exponentially increase the number of connections you make.