The art of leveraging your customers to work for you

When you think of your customers, what usually comes to mind? Your bread and butter? Beautiful people? A necessary nuisance? No matter what we may tell ourselves, one thing is certain. They are not one dimensional.

In this ever growing, ever changing, flip flop, dynamic world we live in, the need to maximize on every available opportunity is tantamount to sustainable growth. One of these oft eschewed tactics is the art of leveraging your customer to either bring you in more business, or help with the workload. The trick is to do it in manner that either empowers or enriches the customer in some way, that they are not only happy to do it, but will eagerly tell anyone who is willing to listen.

In parts of sub Saharan Africa, there are mini bus Taxis that operate the urban routes, transporting the general public to and fro. In majority of the areas these taxis operate with a bus driver and a bus conductor. The role of the conductor is to accost potential travellers, organize the seating arrangements, collect the money and communicate with driver on specific (usually inappropriate) spots to stop and offload passengers.

This seems like a full time job. A necessary full time job considering the rate at which passengers load and offload.

In one specific country the operators somehow have managed to operate successfully using only a driver. How? They use all, and any passenger as a conductor. There is no specific rule as to who does it, but somehow someone ends up doing it. Once they drop off, another person takes over; counting passengers, collecting the money, communicating with the driver and handing the money to him in a professional manner. What does this customer get? A good seat.

So by simply offering a small reward, a customer has become a willing employee, without requiring a check. What other ways can an employer empower his customers?

Customer Testimonials is another method of using customers to grow your brand. By fostering customer testimonials, and creating clear channels and platforms for this activity you can begin to create brand evangelizers. We have spoken about Brand Evangelizers  before, and how critical they are to a growing company. Testimonials however need to have substance for them to be highlighted.

Here is an example of a testimonial that showed emotion and not just empty, humdrum rhetoric:

"Absolute no doubt, the greatness, the fun, the pleasure of shopping can never be compared with that of having from Food World... The best and only memorable times of shopping are directly with Food World... Thumbs up #teamfoodworldzim" (sic)

Food World Zimbabwe.

Offer rewards for specific tasks or functions within your company, and watch customers work for you. Create platforms and channels that allow your customers to make heartfelt testimonials, creating Brand Evangelizers and defacto salespeople. Leverage your customers in any way possible.