As part of my crazy adventures traveling around the country, one of the people i’ve gotten to know and have developed a friendship with is Saul Colt, the Head of Magic at FreshBooks.com.
Last week at SocialMediaCamp NYC, he gave a talk entitled “How to Make Your Love to Your Customers,” which I think is hands down one of the smarter talks I’ve ever heard.
The idea is that if you have a community that uses your product that you need to listen to and care for that community. You need to serve them. You need to show them love.
Howard Greenstein over at INC magazine has a great article on Saul’s talk.
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.
For Saul, the goal isn’t to always be telling people about FreshBooks and how amazing it is (It is amazing. Use it.), his goal is to love. Period.
He’ll listen when you have problems, find the answers, or advocate on your behalf in order to get bugs fixed. He buys customer’s dinner with no expectation of getting anything in return. He even bought a customer who was having a bad day flowers. All just to show love.
Saul and I share this tenant that good customer service is the best marketing. It’s something that every customer needs to pay attention to. It’ll be the difference between whether you succeed or you don’t.
In the words of Gary Vaynerchuk, “Give, give, give until your face falls off.”
Oatmeal Stout - Justin Thorp's blog 
That is so true. Without the customer you can’t have a business. Little things like sending flowers to a customer when you know they had a bad say is something they will always remember. Back in the day when Starbucks was building their business they focused on the customer and wanted them to have a unique experience. That unique experience was that the baristas would know exactly the drink a customer wanted and their name. This went a long way with the Starbucks customer.
I am blushing!
Saul Colt
Head of Magic
FreshBooks