8) Know your audience. This is one of the easiest, yet most forgotten things in customer service. Imagine being able to talk to your audience about things that relate directly to them when they walk into your store, or contact you for an order? It’s not hard. With the level of sharing we’re all subjected to on a daily basis, a simple Google alert on your best customers, or a perusal of a Twitter account should give you a basic insight into what’s up in their world. Mind you, I said a quick perusal. There’s a fine line between “taking an interest,” and “being the creepy stalker who works at Staples.”

7) Being early is a trait of those who excel in customer service. I had a car for 8am this morning. At 7:26am, I get a text that my Groundlink car is on the way, and at 7:39, I get another text that it’s downstairs waiting for me. 20 minutes early, just chilling. When I get downstairs at 7:50, the car is there, I’m calm, relaxed, without that “where the hell is he, I’m going to miss my flight” stress that we get when the time comes and there’s no car. Can you do the same? Can you deliver a project before deadline? Can you auto-upgrade shipping for your customers without charging them extra? Zappos does… Focus on ways to make things happen quicker.

6) Something unexpected. You know what was in my car when I got in this morning? A bottle of water. Simplest thing in the world. They probably buy them in bulk for $5 for 20 bottles. But it was there, and it was available to me, no charge. That little bottle of water made me so happy. I hydrated ,and felt just a little bit better when I arrived at JFK. Good luck getting a bottle of water in a taxi. What little things can you do? I bought a Keurig machine for my office/apartment, and some funky flavored coffees. People actually ask to have meetings at my apartment because they never know what kind of cool coffee they’re going to get. I once knew a CEO who went to Africa each year to bring back 30 pounds of a specific type of coffee bean, but he never told anyone where they could get it. His reasoning? “Maybe they remember where they had the great coffee, and maybe they come back for more, and maybe we do some business.” (Say that in a Yiddish accent, it sounds much funnier.) But he was right. What unexpected things can you do?

5) Stop nickel and diming. Airlines are terrible at this. They quote you a fare of like, $99 dollars to go somewhere, right? But then, that’s each way, and that doesn’t include taxes, tariffs, boarding fees, baggage fees, lubrication fees (for the TSA Anal Probes) and other fees. Total on a $198 round trip? $445.50. How is that good customer service? It’s not. What can you include for no additional cost? Batteries? Ink? Toner? Spare parts? Free transfers? What can you include and call it “a good karma inclusion” or something like that?

4) Can you help someone in a way that’s out of the ordinary? We all know what Morton’s did for me last summer… But what else can you do? I’ve heard stories of restaurants picking people up and driving them to their establishment when a customers’ car died. I’ve heard other stories of companies doing things completely random – A hotel in San Francisco called a hotel in NYC to get the bellman there to deliver flowers to a San Francisco guest’s wife who wasn’t feeling well in NYC. Remember: Simple things are expected. Amazing things get remembered.

3) Don’t be afraid to do something truly incredible! I once heard of a company that makes metal pipes – One of their corporate customers had come in to discuss a new order. While they were there, they mentioned to the owner that they had to take a trip overseas because their plant was having some kind of problem. Turns out, the metal pipe company also had a plant overseas, pretty close to the customer’s plant. The owner of the metal pipe company was able to send his technicians over to the customer’s company and fix the problem, saving the customer a $10,000 trip and a week of his life. How loyal do you think that customer is now?

2) Give your customers the tools to tell your story! There’s a restaurant in the mid-west that has an iPad attached to the bar by the take-out order station. When someone comes in to wait for their food, they’re offered a chance to play with the iPad for free. They’re also told that if they log onto Facebook and “like” the restaurant’s page, they’ll get a free appetizer, right then and there. The company then thanks each and every customer on Facebook, and asks how they like their appetizer. It’s a no-brainer, works so easily, and, perhaps most importantly, as Facebook starts to ramp up “Places” and “Offers,” Facebook will become the de facto standard for customer experience stories – Why wouldn’t you want to help facilitate growth and excitement when the customer is there, in your store, and willing to be talked to? Easiest thing in the world.

1) It has to start from the top down. CEOs can’t run a company from a corner office. It simply doesn’t work. For a company to truly embrace radical ways of handling customer service, the entire corporation has to get in on it. I’ve heard stories of CEOs driving to a customer’s home with a part or an order, because it came in after hours. I once heard of a CEO who happened to be in the building on a Saturday, and answered the phone – The call was a random customer complaining about something. The CEO took the call, and got a resolution in 20 minutes – On a Saturday! You know the customer told the world about that.

What can you do that’s different, over the top, and inexpensive? Let me know in the comments, and as always, thanks for reading. :)

But – Part of succeeding in business has to involve knowing when the bend, or even break the rules. There will never be a rule that can be designed for every single situation without fail. Every situation is different, and anyone in charge of enforcing the rules needs to understand that. No business will thrive (or even survive) if they don’t know when to bend or break a rule.

With that said, allow me to introduce you to The Helena. A gorgeous “green” rental building on 57th Street, with beautiful unobstructed views of the Hudson River, sunset, and New Jersey, it’s a place I called home for seven years prior to buying my new apartment near Times Square a few months ago. As anyone who ever visited me knows, it’s by all accounts, a stunning building, if not a little far west.

I moved in back when the building wasn’t even finished yet. I was the third tenant in the entire building, and the only tenant on my floor for close to eight months, because mine was the only apartment on the floor that was finished. I spent the first six months there listening to the wind rattle through the building, since my apartment was the only one on the floor to have windows installed.

I fell in love with the building, with the doormen and porters, with the garage attendants and the neighbors. Everything about the building was awesome, and I told anyone who would listen how great it was. I am personally responsible for bringing in at least six tenants over my time in the building.

When I bought my new apartment, I still had a few months left on my lease. I went to the management office to ask if I could be let out of my lease early, explaining that I was in one of the coveted two-bedroom apartments, that could be easily rented out, since every time my lease came up for renewal, I’d get a note from management asking if I was leaving, since they always have people ready to take a two-bedroom.

In no uncertain terms, I was told “no.” “Oh, those are really hard to rent,” said Jim Manning, the head of the leasing office. “Funny, I said – you always said you had people looking.” “Oh,” he said, “Well, that was before.” Before what, I don’t know, but whatever.

Here’s the funny part – Letting me out of my lease early is NOT the rule I’m talking about bending. I signed a lease, and I bought my new apartment knowing I still had a few months left. That’s fine – That’s my problem, not theirs.

At around the same time, one of my closest friends, Becca, came home to her place downtown after a business trip to find that a pipe had burst in a neighbors apartment, flooding her apartment, ruining most of her stuff, and making her place unlivable. Her landlord was unwilling to help her, and she needed a place to stay. I’ve known Becca forever, and immediately offered her my apartment for as long as she needed it, since I wasn’t living there anymore, but was still paying rent. She took me up on my offer, and paid me the same amount of rent she was paying in her old place each month. While I wasn’t breaking even, it was better than having to fork out the entire rent for an unused place, and I was able to help a friend. Win-win.

Management knew she was there, knew who she was, and had no problem with it whatsoever. Seemed to work out pretty well.

Fast forward to a month left on my lease. Becca tells me she wouldn’t mind taking the lease over from me when I leave. I figure this to be a win for The Helena – Becca’s already proven herself to be a trustworthy tenant, all that would be necessary would be to transfer the lease, or even have her fill out a new one for her. Everyone wins.

I mention this to the leasing office at the Helena, and they start the paperwork. Here’s where it gets insane: Her former landlord, who she’s suing because he failed to fix the apartment she was in, refuses to sign one piece of paper saying she lived there. Legally, he wasn’t even allowed to do that – if someone lived somewhere, that’s a fact. That you’re being sued by that tenant shouldn’t matter. But he didn’t. Becca had all the other paperwork done, has excellent credit, and explained to management why that piece of paper wasn’t turned in. I even called and let them know that I trusted her, that I’d been there for years without a problem, that she was there for several months without a problem.

The result from The Helena: “Sorry, the rules require us to have that document.”

*Blank stare.*

So let’s understand: In an effort to follow the “rules,” The Helena did the following:

1) They lost a trusted tenant who already had a good history with the building.
2) They angered one of their oldest tenants, who continues to have the ability to recommend that apartment building.
3) They fostered bad-will (as opposed to goodwill) by adhering to a rule that didn’t benefit anyone.
4) They did nothing to help an already damaged leasing office reputation. (See screenshot below)

So Becca’s credit was flawless. I vouched for her (as a seven-year tenant with no negative issues in seven years.) She had already become friends with the doormen and porters, and everyone knew her. She was an asset to the building. The Helena decided none of this mattered, because they “had to follow the rules.”

Bad move, Helena. Bad move.

When to Bend the Rules

Bend the rules when the only benefit of following the rule is to say “I followed the rules.” As I said earlier, no rule can be right for every situation. In this case, there was no downside in bending that one rule. The Helena chose not to, and it cost them a ton more than they gained. Know the reasons why you’re following rules, and know when to bend them.

Bend the rules when the benefit outweighs the negatives. I would have continued to say great things about The Helena, and I would have continued to recommend it to people. Becca would have done the same. Instead, the opposite happened.

Bend the rules when you have the opportunity to foster goodwill, and even remove some negativity about your brand. Check out the two comments on FourSquare about The Helena (neither left by me:)

So they already had this against them. A simple act of goodwill, that wouldn’t have cost them anything could have gone far to void these comments. If you see “Wow, leasing office went out of their way to help me, can’t recommend them enough,” that would neutralize, if not invalidate the comments above. By not doing that, you’ve only reinforced the comments above.

Finally, bend the rules just to be a good human being. You’re the manager of the leasing office. One of the ways you become manager is by demonstrating you have the ability to think critically, not just to act like a robot. You’re in charge because you can make decisions that benefit the company, not just decisions that go “by the book.”

In the end, it comes down to common sense. Know when to be a machine, and know when to be a human being. Leaning one way or another can have ripples for years to come. In this case, the ripples are negative. I get asked by people all the time where to live in Manhattan. There are lots of luxury rental buildings I could recommend. Sadly, The Helena will no longer be one of them.

That will be almost 16 hours of uninterrupted writing. Blog posts, my new book (due out in January, being published by Palgrave/MacMillan), emails for my newsletter… Heck, perhaps even a note to my future child (not that there’s anything in the works yet, calm down, mom…)

But there will be writing. It seems that planes are the only place lately where I can write uninterrupted, without the real world, or the Internet, or my mobile phone, or my cat distracting me. (Squirrel!) Planes are my last bastion of creativity. I’ve got a handful of new blog posts to write, including…

• A true story of how a six year relationship with a corporation ended in one hour because they chose to not bend a rule
• How I manage to eat healthy/stay somewhat fit/get my workouts in while traveling 250,000+ miles a year
• What I’ve learned from my first four months of being married, and how I can apply that to business
• Race report on Ironman 70.3 Galveston
• And a bunch of other fun pieces.

So apologies for falling down on the blog of late, but stay tuned – I’ve got some good stuff coming up! If you have any ideas for what you’d like me to write about on the return trip, leave them here – I’m happy to do it!

PS: Are you watching the Two Minute Rundown? Each weekday, Bob Knorpp and I analyze the latest in marketing, advertising, and branding, and how it impacts you, all within two minutes. Here’s the latest episode from this morning:

I volunteered to give it a shot, even after being told there was no turning back – i.e., my “Fan page” would disappear, and I couldn’t bring it back.

After asking a ton of questions (and to Facebook’s credit, the person who reached out to me answered every single one, no matter how basic or stupid they seemed,) I told Facebook to flip the switch.

Within 24 hours, http://facebook.com/petershankman redirected to my personal page, and my “Fan page” was no more.

A little over a month later, here’s what I’ve learned from that transformation.

Overall, I’m happy with the change. There’s no doubt that it’s easier to update one page vs. two, and it’s most definitely easier to update Facebook via mobile, which, lets be honest, is where a decent amount of content happens. Before the merger, I’d have to email photos to a specific email address and hope they made it – I couldn’t tag or add location until I got back to a laptop. So there’s no doubt that being able to fully utilize the Facebook Droid App for all that it’s made to do (tagging, location, and privacy) is a big bonus.

Positives:

1) Probably the most important, the merger to one page means I’m more likely to post more quality content. I never truly realized the value of the Facebook App on my Droid until my pages were merged. Because there was no support for Fan Pages (yes, you could email to a private address, but nothing like what you can do with the app – tagging, location, etc.) I was more than likely to take a photo and Tweet it out, or save it to post on my fan page if I remembered later or the next day. In other words, if I was away from my laptop when I wanted to share content, those on my “fan page” got the short end of the stick. With the merged page, I have over 50,000 subscribers (formerly fans) in addition to my “friends” who now can see my content in real time, tagged and geo-tagged, as long as I make sure the content is public. As someone whose mantra is “having an audience is a privilege, not a right,” I can’t stress enough the power of this change: Facebook has taken away all the previous barriers that crippled my fan page when I was mobile, and I can truly offer my audience the best content I have, as it happens. At an event and spot a celeb? I can post and tag. At the airport with four hours to kill and want to offer anyone who knows me and happens to be there access to the airline lounge as my guest? Can do it in a heartbeat. The ability to use the mobile apps to share content and choose what level of sharing I want is definitely the best result of the new merged format.

2) Truly “owning” privacy, (to the extent anyone actually can on Facebook,) means I’m more aware of everything I post. Huh? “Of course you’re aware of it, Peter, you’re posting it!” Not quite. Think about it: You post a photo or a joke to your personal page – You can do it without thinking – “It’s my personal page, I can do whatever I want.” Posting to a fan page? Same logic applies in a different format: “My fans are a step removed from my “friends,” I can only post “this type” of content.” It’s an easy rule from both sides, and it’s easy to get into a rut with it. But there’s the problem: We’re lured into thinking in only one of two ways – “personal” or “fan.” That gets boring fast, and prevents you from engaging your audience anywhere near your full potential. Because I have to decide for who I’m posting every time I post on the merged page, I’m more likely to really think about my content. Does this content really matter to my fans? Am I just posting to show off or to hear my own voice? Will this be relevant to people who have never met me personally? All these questions come into play with every post I make, whether a status update, photo, video, or link. And while you might be thinking that it’s a pain in the ass, in fact, it’s the opposite – It makes me ask if what I’m sharing is really worth my audience’s time. And that’s how we should always be thinking about our voice: Putting our audience’s needs before ours.

Negatives:

There’s really only one negative that stands out, and I’ve learned how to compensate for it. When your pages are merged, and you have both “friends” and “subscribers,” only friends can post on your wall. On a fan page, any fan could start a conversation. With subscribers, only confirmed friends can. When I first noticed this, within 12 hours of the changeover, I was mortified – I emailed and asked why, and the answer was an obvious one, to avoid spam posts. I get it, but I was still concerned that I was stifling my audience’s ability to talk to me – to reach out and start a conversation. Over the next week or so, I realized that if you focus on figuring out the best way to communicate with your audience, them not being able to post on your wall isn’t that important. I do hope Facebook changes their logic here and lets subscribers post like they could before as fans. Even if it means you have to scrub spam daily, I think it’s worth it. But until that happens, I’ve learned that as long as I give my subscribers the ability to comment on all my content I make public, then my audience doesn’t feel stifled. I also ask probing questions that people want to answer in the comments – Anything from asking about their evening plans to asking if anyone has great images of their last vacation.

To make up for the lack of wall interaction on the part of subscribers, it does mean I have to post a bit more – But that’s not a bad thing, if you post with your audience in mind. I also believe that Facebook will offer the option for subscribers to post on walls of “merged” pages soon enough – I don’t see a downside to it. They can already do it on fan pages, and Facebook’s spam algorithms are certainly decent enough. So I think that’s just a matter of time.

Is the merge right for every brand out there?

No. The fact is, there are tons of large companies who have several people who manage their online brand, or are too big to be associated with one person. Any large company comes to mind – A car company – Any national or international brand – You get the idea. They need to keep their “fan” pages as they are. They’re a true “Brand.”

I think the problem is that with the advent of Social Media, everyone thinks they’re a “brand.” And in some sense, they are. But in the sense of a “fan page,” Facebook is right in making this change. A “Brand” of a person, a celebrity, or the like, should be “them.” A “fan page” is a misnomer – It should be a page about them – One page, they can adjust to make public the content they want public, and private the content they want private. Much like in real life, if you think about it. And that’s smart. So for every brand? No. For most people/celebrities/public figures who have “fan pages?” Yes. It’s time to convert.

End result:

Am I happy I made the change? Yes. The ability to post all my content to one place and decide on the fly who gets to see it in real time is a lifesaver – and I’ve definitely noticed my interaction and engagement from subscribers is higher now than when they were just fans on the “fan page.” Remember this, too: I’ve always said that it’s only a matter of time until the line between our “personal” and “professional” brand goes away, and it’ll be up to us to choose what gets posted in our world. I think this is another step towards that happening for those who aren’t “corporations,” but rather, who live in that mixture between who they are, and the professional brand they’re trying to cultivate. Facebook’s merger option should help anyone in that space, and as long as we’re smart enough to realize we should be there, this is a benefit, no doubt.

Thoughts? Comments? As always, I want to hear them. Leave them below. And by the way – If you’re not a subscriber to me on Facebook, you can fix that here.

Realize – Email marketing without the right training is a way to screw up to a larger audience in a shorter amount of time. What’s so great about this merger is that you now have the tools to look at email as another marketing tool – not just something alone – In other words, you can use all of the Vocus tools – The Small Business Marketing Suite, to truly grow your business, in every facet available – email, publicity, social media, you name it. Vocus really has become the small business marketing source.

The best part about the acquisition is this – The entire Vocus family will be around to help you – Email, just like HARO and PRWeb, and all the other stars within the Vocus galaxy, is simply another way to market to your consumers. But, it needs to be done right. Got a question? Ask me. Let me help you before you send those emails out – Lest they come back to bite you. The rules are below – right below this video of me interviewing the CEO of Vocus about this exciting acquisition.

4) Stop assuming that if we’ve ever met, even once, I want to be added to every list you have. There’s a great scene in “King of the Hill,” where Peggy gets some guy’s email address at a party, and says “Well, Mr. john234@aol.com, prepare to be added to Peggy Hill’s Joke of the Day List!” You just know how annoying it is before you ever get one. Let people sign up for your list. DON’T sign them up yourself. It’s just bad.

3) Email is like really good Cumin. If you use too much of it, you’re going to ruin the dish. Email marketing isn’t to reach out and bother the customer every single day. It’s designed to create compelling content for the customer. This could be a special, a discount, or even a great story. Anything else can probably be done in a less intrusive way, like a blog post or a colooscopy.

2) I don’t know anyone named DONOTREPLY@YOURCOMPANY.COM. I’m also pretty sure I wouldn’t want to talk to anyone who puts “THIS EMAIL ISN’T MONITORED, PLEASE DON’T REPLY” as the last line in their email. You’re earning the privilege to email your audience. Be a human being when you do it.

1) Much like a bad relationship, or a bad breakfast burrito, know when it’s time to part ways. Make it easy to leave, with one click. (Anything other than that is considered SPAM) – It’s awesome to be able to grow your list – But it’s just as good to be able to let people leave when they want to – Because I guarantee this – If I can’t unsubscribe from you, the world is going to hear about it – And it won’t be pleasant. One click, one away. Make that the rule you live by in email marketing.

Bonus – Do you use Auto-Responder emails? Chances are, you’re using them wrong, too. Here’s how not to.

Give me some other ideas that work for you on email marketing in the comments below! Best comment wins a free press release from PRWeb.