Another tool to fight the “No time for customer service” excuse

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This post is part of a series of posts I’m writing that are centered around customer service, and my new book, Zombie Loyalists: Using Great Service to Create Rabid Fans. I hope you find it useful!

Another in the Zombie Loyalists collection – This time on another way to beat the “I run a business, I don’t have time to do extra customer service” myth.

The Internet was supposed to make all of our lives easier, right? Yet I hear on a regular basis about how difficult it is to keep up on communications with your audience, now that they’re all in different places.

It is doable, I swear, and there are tons of ways to make it easier.

Enter IFTTT (IF This Then That.) I’ve been using IFTT for a little over a year, and what it can do is really amazing.

Essentially, IFTTT allows you to create “recipes” that you can use to make your life easier, to make some programs talk to other programs, and to make your interaction with your customers a lot easier.

For example – I use IFTTT to keep track of when anyone in my LinkedIn network gets a promotion or a new job. Rather than have LinkedIn send me their annoying emails every day, I simply enter a recipe in IFTTT that sends me a quick email when anyone posts a new job. Once that’s done, it takes five seconds to simply drop them an email – “Hey Mark – Noticed you’re now the head of purchasing at Innatech – Congratulations!” Or, if it’s someone I’m closer to, (or a client for whom I’ve recently done some work,) I can head over to Starbucks.com and buy them a congratulatory gift card. The benefit? It’s all about standing out, and being just a little better than the norm. But IFTTT’s talents don’t stop there.

I have a setting where IFTTT shows me any Instagram photo (in real time) taken by anyone within a one block radius of my office. I do it because it’s cool to see what people are photographing, but wouldn’t it be cool if you were a company to be able to see those photos as they happen, and comment “Hey, nice photo – I see our restaurant in the background – Come on in, ask for Peter, and your first drink is on us!”

How quickly would you gain a new Zombie Loyalist if you did that?

Check out IFTTT. I’m a big fan – it’s another tool in the arsenal of the Zombie Loyalist Breeder.