They go by a number of different names and definitions: “True Believers”, “Brand Advocates”, and “Customer Evangelists” – whatever you call them, if you sell anything at all, you probably want more of them. For our purposes, we’ll use “evangelists” and define them simply as those users who are so enamoured with your product or service that they will go out of their way to recommend it to others. They do so not out of any financial incentive, but instead act out of a sincere desire to help others. Your product or service is so good or life-changing in their eyes that they are intrinsically motivated to ‘tell others of the good news’ (which is more or less what the term evangelism is originally derived from).

How are these evangelists created, and how can I get some?

In our short experience, we’ve found that evangelists are created directly through great experiences. That experience can come in the form of the product itself (ie. the design, form or function), through the benefits that come as a result of using the product, or through the support given when needed. I’ll give some examples of each, either through our experience of other products or through our customers’s experience of OpenCal, our online appointment scheduling application.

Evangelism at first sight.

In the first case, we have what I like to call ‘evangelism at first sight’. Apple is pretty much the standard example of this type of product experience. For most of us, there is an actual joy experienced from simply holding an Apple product. When I got my iPhone 4 (incidentally my first real Apple experience), there was something about the weight of it, the way it balanced in my hand, and the cool feel of the glass and metal that made me think, ‘This… is good.’ The product wasn’t even powered on yet and I already knew I loved it. That’s evangelism at first sight. Of course, had the iPhone then spectacularly failed in the following minutes, I probably would have been less impressed with it. So it’s more than just seeing and touching a product, ‘evangelism at first sight’ also includes the initial moments and experience of using the product.

This type of evangelism takes the most effort to create and is probably the most specialized. It begins well before the first prototype and comes from a deep understanding of what the product does and who it’s for and why it’s the right solution. On top of that, it helps if it can be physically beautiful or at least can create a lasting impression on the user. When you build a great product, you will occasionally receive these magical emails or comments which make all the delays and hard work worth it in the end. We have a few of these, and we put them in a ‘feel good’ folder to look at on days when a goal seems beyond reach.

Let the benefits do the talking.

“I’m booking clients three weeks out instead of one!”

That quote comes from one of our customers who really likes our service. For him, obviously, we’re solving a big problem around appointment scheduling, and we’re doing such a good job of it, he thought it right to let us know. That’s always a good sign. Hopefully, your product or service solves a problem, otherwise, you’ve probably got bigger issues than not having enough evangelists. That said, occasionally a product will solve a problem so well that a user instantly converts into an evangelist because of the resulting benefits. For example, anyone who knows me knows I’m a huge fan of KEEN shoes. I actually never realized how much my feet were bothering me until I bought my first pair of KEENs. Before that, I just thought sore feet were normal. Now, having gone through about 2 pairs a year for the past 5 years, my feet have never felt better. And I tell a lot of people about that, and I’m sure a lot of them go on to buy KEEN shoes as well.

If your customer aren’t raving about your service, talk to them, find out what they like and don’t like, and see if you can more thoroughly solve their problems. If you can, it will be time well spent. In fact, let’s take a moment to consider the business case for evangelism in terms of cold, hard facts, or whatever the equivalent for that is on the web. Here are just two examples of why evangelists are compelling:

• Evangelist referrals are three times more valuable than an ordinary referral (according to Zuberance.com, via Brand Ascension).
• 37 Signals has repeatedly noted on their excellent Signal vs. Noise blog that their business is often driven by WOM or “Blog of Mouth” referrals.

Creating evangelists through customer service.

Let’s face it – no matter how well you build something, mistakes will be made, bugs will be found, and assumptions will be made to look foolish. As ridiculous as it sounds, you should cherish these moments, because it’s through them that you will have the chance to create an evangelist for your product. Without getting into too much detail, there are a few cardinal rules of giving exceptional customer service.

1. Listen
2. Empathize
3. Always be honest
4. Be a human

These rules work whether you are responding by email or speaking directly to a customer on the phone or in person. We’ll include more detail on how to use these rules to create customer evangelists in a follow-up post in on Thursday.

In the meantime, we would love to hear from you. Tell us your stories of how you’ve created truly evangelical customers and how it happened.

While we built OpenCal to enhance any business that takes appointments, we’ve found that our product is very popular with Registered Massage Therapists, or RMTs. To find out why that is, we decided to take a closer look at what makes OpenCal the perfect solution for many Massage Therapy Clinics.

Grow your business without a receptionist

For a lot of RMTs, starting out means beginning with a client list and not a whole lot else. For these solo-preneuers, getting visibility and being responsive to customer requests is paramount. With online appointment scheduling, your business is open 24/7 – so clients and potential clients can make appointments with you while you are busy helping other clients, or even when you’re away from your practice. Bethany Ingraham, a happy OpenCal user, passed on a message from one of her clients who loves booking massage therapy sessions online:

I loved the website! It was very easy to use and explanatory. I liked being able to reference your availability as a list rather than having to ask back and forth what was free and what was not for time slots. The checkout was flawless and I liked the email confirmation that I received because I can be very forgetful or neglect writing something down. This was an easy way to schedule something, and if I had questions, I could always call you. A very good option for someone who is usually at work like me!

For Bethany, who operates a sole prop massage therapy clinic, being open 24/7 has made a significant difference in the number of new clients she has booked.

“Since signing up for OpenCal I’ve already booked several new clients. It was like turning on a switch!”

Great customer service

Some of our users are in a shared office environment, or work out of a clinic with multiple RMTs. In this case, OpenCal helps front office staff provide top-notch customer service. And with the notes field, it’s easy to track and remember customer preferences and requests. One of our customers uses the notes field to request details from her customers about allergies or any other complications.

No shows get expensive quickly

Automatic email appointment reminders keep customers in the loop, so instead of spending time tracking down no-shows, one of our clients uses that time to write thank you notes to her customers. OpenCal takes care of growing your business profitably, giving you the time to treat your customers like superstars.

Everything in one place

It’s easy to lose track of little bits of paper. Besides the notes features for clients, you can also access a client’s history and see at a glance the last time someone booked a service, and send them a timely reminder to book an appointment. You can even use the calendar to schedule your own life and receive notifications of your own appointments.

Is an MBA valuable inside a startup? You’ll see variants of this question, such as ‘should a founder have an MBA’ – in any case, there are three common responses to the query: yes, NO, and it couldn’t hurt, right?

So which is it? Is an MBA important? Does it matter? Could it hurt?

Now, given that I have an MBA, it should be obvious that I would generally fall into the non-enthusiastic yes, it’s important, category. Having a founder or an early hire who has an MBA is only going to help your startup. But that non-enthusiastic yes comes with major caveats.

For starters, there are plenty of idiots walking around with MBAs. Of course, I don’t think that getting an MBA would make someone an idiot; rather, I mean that getting an MBA won’t stop you from being an idiot (and it will at least sometimes make you sound like one). Now, for sure, anyone with an MBA is probably a reasonably intelligent person. But that doesn’t mean they are going to be fun to work with. It also doesn’t mean they’re going to know how to extract value from the theory they learned that will be able to help you grow or prosper as a startup.

Perhaps it is better to put this in opposition, and consider what is better than an MBA in a startup. Here are a few traits that I think trump the degree:

• Empathy
• Curiosity
• Tenacity
• Humility
• Charisma

Now, if you have those things, and you have an MBA, then I think you’re going to be great inside a startup. Because you will need all those traits much more than you need specialized business knowledge. You need to be able to listen well and to consider alternative perspectives, you need to be driven to know things and to discover facts (particularly when they seem inscrutable), you need to hold no grudge when your brilliant ideas fall on deaf ears, you need to be able to walk away from mistakes and miscues, and you need to be the kind of person that you would love to end up getting stuck in an airport with for several days, because often enough, that is what it is like inside a startup.

But what about the technical or business skills an MBA brings to the table? I’m sure if you wanted a laundry list of things in an MBA curriculum, then you could probably go and look that up and you would know as many business nouns as many of the graduates do. Some of those things will be practical to your startup, most of them will not. For example, almost all MBAs know what a Monte Carlo simulation is, and many of those will be able to run one. But is that really important in a startup? I can imagine a couple of scenarios, but in general, it’s not going to be important. Of course, most MBAs are Excel wizards, and that can be useful for understanding and tracking certain metrics (but you needn’t have an MBA in order to be an Excel wizard). We also learn how to write creative briefs. Yes, a brief will help if you need an ad agency to design a campaign for you, and you could maybe argue that it will help you define an advertising strategy, but again, we’re talking generally further along from the startup stage.

But an MBA does tend to change the way you look at the world, and it does make you ask certain questions which can be valuable in a startup. It’s hard for me to describe this in a general way, so I’ll try to use a recent example. I tend to think about incentives a lot, and the behaviours those incentives imply, and what that means to, say, a potential contest we might run. So when we start talking about getting users to do certain things, we discuss what we think is likely to be true, and then what I want, and what most MBAs will want, is some kind of data to base the final decision on. So we tend to be great at framing a discussion, getting a concensus on what is important in that scenario, and then figuring out how to get data in order to make a decision.

Another area where I know I bring value is in applying game theory. Of course, taking an MBA doesn’t make you an expert in game theory – at best, it whets your appetite to learn more. But in a startup, it can help you figure out which projects to pursue, or what and how to negotiate with rivals or potential partners. Moreover, I like to think and talk about our competition. Not just because I care about what they are doing, but because I like to consider the long term implications of operating in a nascent and profitable industry sector. I like to consider what that means to larger and smaller players, and what kind of attention we are likely to attract, and what kinds of moves we should consider.

So. That’s how I see the value of an MBA inside a startup. But I’m sure I missed some things. If you have an MBA, let me know in the comments what special value you bring to a startup (or an early stage company). If you work with someone who has an MBA, give us your perspective – does he or she add value that is unique?

In the past week, I’ve been doing a bit of research into the spa industry in an effort to better understand the needs of an important segment of our users. What I’ve found, particularly if you’re a spa owner or manager who has not yet embraced online marketing, should be jaw-dropping. I’ll include the sources at the conclusion of the post below.

First, consider this table, taken from a 2009 survey of American Spa Magazine’s readers. You’ll notice spa owners were asked to consider the effectiveness of retaining customers through a number of different means. What I find striking is that email/internet ranked highest in terms of overall effectiveness (34% finding it somewhat effective, and 54% finding it highly effective).

So, if you’re not using email to keep customers in the loop and aware of any changes or specials, it might be time to create that marketing material and craft a message.

Moving along in the survey, we find another gem:

What I find surprising here is not the amount of success that spas are finding by embracing the digital tools available to them, but the large percentages in the ‘not in use’ category, particularly for Spa and Client Management systems, and then the lower (but still shocking) numbers for Spa Website and Email Communications. The idea that as many as 22% of all spa owners that are readers of American Spa Magazine are not online is outrageous.

Last, this set of results is intriguing for online appointment scheduling providers such as ourselves. There are two things that stand out here: first, a whopping 44% of all respondents track appointments manually alone, and this is coming from an industry that has been ahead of the curve in adopting technology to satisfy business needs. You can make the argument that pen and paper could supplement online client management and appointment tracking, but once you implement a system like OpenCal, the time savings you gain will make it impossible to return to pen and paper alone.

Secondly, you’ll notice that 39% of respondents use Spa Software while only 3% use an online appointment system to track client appointments. We really love this statistic, since we believe that the future is the cloud and software that requires updating (even auto-downloading) is going to disappear in the medium term. Online applications mean that you are always running the most up-to-date version and that you can access your data from really almost anywhere.

Groupon can make or break your business. It’s a hot topic, for good reason. While we don’t often hear about the many Groupons that go smoothly, there have been a few notable exceptions that have been getting lots of press recently, most notably the story of Posie’s Cafe in Portland which nearly went bankrupt.

Using Groupon is akin to that oft-repeated aphorism: be careful what you wish for. Yes, you do want new customers, and yes, you do want to generate that all-elusive buzz around your business. But you have to set up your Groupon so that you’re not crushed by the hordes as they stampede through your doors.

Our Groupon tips:

1. Limit the number of Groupons available – or, barring that, at least limit how they are used, ie. if you’re selling restaurant or café Groupons, make sure you limit the number that can be used per visit or per table. You want to get people in the door and spending money, not eating your rent. Although there are a few blog posts flying around the internet attacking Groupon for not allowing limits on Groupons, according to Groupon CEO Andrew Mason, official company policy is to always allow caps on the number of Groupons on offer.

2. Treat your Groupon customers the same or better than your normal customers. This one is tough – there are lots of reports of lousy Groupon customers who expect the world from you even though you’re probably practically giving your product or service away. But a Groupon customer that doesn’t convert into a loyal customer is much less valuable than one who does. Remember that every customer interaction is an audition, even when they come flooding through the doors and perhaps won’t tip appropriately.

3. Prepare for the barbarians. Depending on what kind of business you run, we’ve heard that you can expect a big run-up following a successful Groupon. So don’t come unprepared. Hire more people if you need to – normal business for a Monday can easily double overnight. Let your staff know about the upcoming Groupon well in advance to mentally prepare themselves.

4. Let signs do the work. Have signs ready to communicate with your customers after the launch. Signs should ask them to bear in mind the value of the Groupon when tipping and to let staff know if you’re using a Groupon to pay for the meal or service. Another good idea is to ask customers to please bear with you if your business seems momentarily overwhelmed.

5. Ready, Get Set…Schedule! If you’re a service-based business, set up online scheduling before you flip the switch. Otherwise, your phone will be ringing off the hook all day (and week), so giving that demand a relief valve in the form of online appointment scheduling is a great idea. You could use any of several services out there, but we’re, ahem, partial to one in particular. (Cough) OpenCal online appointment scheduling (cough).

6. Extra everything. If you’re in the restaurant industry, you need extra supplies, extra staff, extra training, and everyone needs to be extra friendly (which usually means extra sleep the night before!)

7. Use an expiration date. Three to six months is usually reasonable. You don’t want to be seen as trying to rip off customers but at the same time you need to be able to measure the effect of the Groupon in a reasonable time frame.

8. If you Groupon, they will come. For at least a week, according to most, business will be off the charts. It’s important to remember that you are not preparing for only the launch day, you’re preparing for a whole week of insanity, and really, if you do it right, you’re preparing for more business forever.

Too many words? Watch the video instead – the straight goods on Groupon from Corey Kaplan, owner of New York City Bagel Deli in Chicago.

Have an experience to share about Groupon? Have you bought groupons or been a user before? Share your thoughts with us!