Tricking is a shortcut that erodes trust and stains your industry.

And it’s everywhere.

Creators are tricking
people into consuming their content. Movie trailers intercut dialogue from
different scenes, use music that isn’t on the soundtrack and show action
sequences that don’t make the final cut. But by the time you’ve paid for and
watched the film, it’s too late.

Companies are tricking
customers into buying.
Credit cards lead you to believe certain services are free and mandatory. And
you end up paying for costly, unnecessary amenities like payment protection and
credit monitoring. But by the time you’ve shelled out for the hidden fees, it’s
too late.

Websites are tricking
users into oversharing. Applications coerce you into signing misleading
agreements, bypassing privacy settings and revealing personal information. And
before you know it, they’re tracking and predicting your every move. But by the
time you’ve updated your status, it’s too late.

What’s scary is, the culprits of this trickery aren’t the
typical scammers, spammers and hacks. 

Nigerian Prince Emeka Umtoku? I expect
trickery from him.

These examples come from real companies. Big ones. Public ones.

That’s their strategy for reaching you – a digital ruse.

The irony is, if you have to trick customers into buying,
using, viewing or sharing your product; you don’t deserve to be selling it in
the first place.

“Where has this place been my whole life?”

That’s the ultimate. To make people miss you in their past.
To deliver such an amazing experience, such a phenomenal product, that not only
do they rave and regale and recommend you to the world, they regret not meeting
you sooner. They can’t believe they’re just now finding out about you.

Finally, a company who gets it. A company who gets them.

Because prior to today, interacting with an company who does
what you do, has been a chore at best and a nightmare at worst. Certainly not something people
could enjoy or, god forbid, look forward to.

But now that they’ve found you, they may never leave.

Nourish is the perfect example. If you’re a health conscious
person with allergies or dietary restrictions, this place is your mecca. Your
health food paradise. Your safe zone for not feeling like the freak at the
table. Kirstin even wrote a cookbook on this very idea.

If you want to become a regular part of people’s lives, if
you want them to make time in their busy schedule to visit the world you’ve
created, put yourself in their future by making them miss you in their past.

Target has offered nearly two thousand design options for its gift cards.

And as a result, they’re more just plain piece of plastic,
they’re symbols of smart design, badges of technological innovation, high touch
collector’s items, engaging social objects, artifacts of the holiday season, collaborative
employee projects, exemplars of corporate sustainability, patented parts of the
company brand, even some cards are presents in themselves, offering the shoppers
entertainment, candy, games, sound, interactivity and personalized messages.

Not to mention, the cards have no expiration dates or
finance charges.

Bravo.

Target
sees value in the discarded. No pun intended. They capitalize on the content others neglect, make the mundane
memorable, spot opportunities overlooked by their rivals, fall in love with what other companies
are turned off by, specialize in an experience most companies take for
granted, and fueled by the very things most companies fear, they make something
cool that engages the world.

I wonder how you could swipe that idea for your organization.

It started out as an insurance policy.

By adding one additional cookie to the order, bakers protected
themselves against accidentally short weighting customers, paying severe
government fines, losing a hand to an axe, having an ear nailed to their shop
door and becoming known around town as a dishonest businessman.

Of course, that was seven hundred years ago.

Now they call it a baker’s dozen because they care.

Because that one extra cookie, that one purposeful, tactile
expression of effort, which only rounds out to about eight percent extra dough,
is worth giving away to the customer as a thank you for spending their dough on the first twelve.

What’s your brand’s baker’s dozen? What meaningful, memorable and
meditated bonus do you offer at the end of every transaction?

It doesn’t have to be about labor and time, just intention
and attention.

That’s the only insurance policy your brand needs.

We are seeing the death of traditional career paths.

Now, micro business is the new small business.

Instead
building a hulking beast of an enterprise, we start by building something simple, like an app or a website
or a piece of software. Then, instead of searching for some magical
distribution channel, we just ship it. We make it available, and other
people come and get it.
Then, if it takes off, if we amass enough attention and permission and
momentum, we build the actual business around those assets with a small
core team serving tons of users, customers and co-creators. And if we’re lucky, make some
money and change the world.

Pretty
sweet model.

Simple.
Fast. Cheap. Low risk. No employees. No permission. No debt. Home based.
Completely manageable. Tons of fun. And one amazing learning experience.

Where
do we sign?

The best way to get more business from your customers is by intelligently interacting with them.

For
example, one fourth of all Bonobos customer service is publicized.

Consider
the implications of this.

First,
it multiples their reach. Exponentially more people can experience and benefit
from a single act of service. Even if they’re not customers. Second, it creates
an apparatus of accountability. Each interaction requires thoughtful
consideration on the behalf of the employees. Even if they’re engaging with
critics. Third, it builds their listening platform. Direct engagement with
customers leaves behind a trail of potentially valuable data. Even if
they’re just saying hello. And fourth, it delivers social proof. Potential
customers see their amazing service in action. Even if they know nothing about
the product yet.

It’s the perfect storm.

Combine amazing customer service with public social media
and you’ve got a winning equation for converting interactions into income.

Synthesizing is an underrated talent.

If
you can become known as someone who boils down complex ideas to a bare, yet
highly memorable minimum, creates labels for things that make it faster to
classify and understand what’s going on, packages truths as meaningful concrete
nuggets that give
meaning to human experiences, delivers micro masterpieces of clarity and brevity to help others structure
and interpret reality, helps people make sense of life and bring order to a
world that is confusing and scary, and someone who feels and says what most
people can’t express for themselves,
if you can be that person, your voice will be requested in many places.

The hard part is, it is the synthesizer who listens the
loudest, waits the longest, thinks the hardest and speaks the latest.

Are you up to the challenge?

Purpose is easy to over complicate.

Organizations spend thousands of dollars and hundreds of
hours creating purpose statements full of expensive, opaque, altruistic, exaggerated
jumbles of corporate buzzwords that, in the end, mean nothing and inspire nobody.

When the reality is, purpose is best stated when it’s
simple, specific and meaningful to the people who matter most. That’s enough.

We make our clients look like heroes. We bring fun to the
daily chore of being a consumer. We positively ruin the rest of the software
world for people. We entertain society by using our client’s products. We help
users become better at things they care about. We make patients feel less alone
in their misery. We buy other company’s mistakes. We build a circle of trust through
a circus of pranks.

Don’t make it any harder than it already is.

Just talk like people talk.

Because when you organize your company around a clear idea of
how you plan to change the world for the better, you will create a center of
gravity, a heart, a reason to be, that draws employees, partners, and customers
toward it.

Most company policies coincidentally favor the company.

Instead
of respecting customers, they’re more about making excuses, creating insurance,
inhibiting creativity, controlling costs, avoiding accountability, building
deniability, protecting executive egos, appeasing shareholders and covering corporate
asses.

But what if, once a year, companies held an open forum for
customers to submit ideas for new company policies? What if, instead of
operating solely inside their own heads, organizations let the people who know their product best (and the problems
thereof) to shed light on smarter ways of doing business?

Hell,
companies outsource everything else. Why stop there?

Consider
the implications of letting customers design your policies:

Ownership. People want to put
their fingerprints on the things they love. If customers had a real role in
shaping the way they were treated, loyalty would skyrocket.

Engagement. Social
media isn’t a sales tool, it’s a hearing aid. If customers could voice their
ideas through those listening platforms, brand engagement would skyrocket.

Loyalty. When you help paint a fence,
you don’t stand mute while punks spray graffiti. If customers had a greater
stake in the company’s architecture, belonging would skyrocket.

Reputation. Flexibility
is a policy worth having. If customers saw that the company had a disposable
mindset, goodwill would skyrocket.

Look, policies suck. And everyone knows it. Especially the
customers.

But if companies outsourced that function to the people who
matter most, perhaps there would be less friction in their daily interactions.

If you can help the client forget she’s a client, everybody wins.

Try a few of these.

Instead
of applying your rigid methodology, just sit down, look people in the eye ask
them what they want to do, and what would make them happy.

Instead of bludgeoning people with facts and theories, just
talk like people talk, listen as loudly as you can, and remember that they’re
human just like you.

Instead of breathing deep sighs that make people feel like
an inconvenience, make the daily chore of being a client more fun.

Instead of trying to minimize call time, hold a contest to
see who can interact with clients on the phone for the longest duration.

Instead of waiting for permission to warm up to each other, just
cut the crap and connect on a personal level that’s unrelated to business.

Client service? Try a little amnesia.