Giving a customer the ability to do something that they didn’t know they could (or even know was possible) can make for an exceptional customer experience.<\/p>\n
I’ve had a season mini-pack of Dallas Mavericks tickets for a handful of years now and have always gotten the exact experience that I expected: The same seats every time, consistent food and drink, great entertainment, and a quality team on the court that wins considerably more often than not. <\/p>\n
However, this year it’s been a little different. This year, they have thrown in several perks that cost them nothing or next to nothing but have made a huge difference in the overall experience.<\/p>\n
One game in particular sticks out in my mind. A couple of weeks before a game against the Wizards, I got an email about a no cost chance for me and one other person to stand in a high five line to give fives to the players as they came out for warmups. I had no idea fans actually got to do this, so I gladly signed up and took my 5 year-old son to the game. I had also received an invite from the sales rep to choose a date to spend the first half of a game in one of the suites, so I made it the same night.<\/p>\n
That night, we joined a small group of people down by the tunnel before the game, and we got to give all the players, Mark Cuban, the Mavs Maniacs and even a few security guards high fives. My son was over-the-moon to “meet” his favorite players – Dirk, Kidd, and Jet – could hardly contain himself. <\/p>\n
This game also happened to be the week before the Super Bowl. I only mention it because on the way to our suite, I was blinded by the biggest ring I had ever seen. It turned out to be a Super Bowl ring and the guy wearing it was James Harrison (the linebacker for Steelers that lost a bunch of money to fines for helmet to helmet hits last season), so I got to meet him and wish him luck for the big game. <\/p>\n
Oh, and and I can’t forget to mention the free hats, shirts, and Roddy B. bobblehead.<\/p>\n
Long story short, I probably couldn’t tell you who won the other ten games I went to this year, but I don’t think I’ll forget anything about this particular game.<\/p>\n
The thing I took away from this experience is when you give a customer something above and beyond what is expected, however seemingly insignificant, you can monumentally improve their customer experience.<\/p>\n
To bring it back around to SoftLayer, we give customers a great API<\/a> – a REST API<\/a> at that. We give them VPN<\/a>, a private network<\/a>, IPv6<\/a>, and a fully provisioned server<\/a> in a couple of hours. Each of these differentiators enables us to provide products and services that our competitors can only hope to imitate.<\/p>\n The first time the customer uses the API to automatically create a new Cloud Instance from their own program, it’ll be a Maverick-game experience. When they transfer data from Washington, D.C., to San Jose, CA, on our private network with zero bandwidth charge, they’ll feel like they’re high-fiving Dirk Nowitski. When they access their server over the free KVM over IP, they’re walking up to the suite and meeting a Super Bowl champion. And all of that is on top of a stable, speedy server environment!<\/p>\n What can we do to improve your customer experience?<\/p>\n -Brad<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Giving a customer the ability to do something that they didn’t know they could (or even know was possible) can make for an exceptional customer experience. I’ve had a season mini-pack of Dallas Mavericks tickets for a handful of years … Continue reading