Purple Goldfish 2.0: 10 Ways to Attract Raving Customers by Stan Phelps

Purple Goldfish 2.0: 10 Ways to Attract Raving Customers Reviews

• 
  Shelhorowitzgreenmkt

  Back in December, 2008, I reviewed The Customer Delight Principle by Timothy Keiningham and Terry Varva, all about winning and keeping customers by sprinkling in unexpected moments of joy. But that book was really for academics, and it was published in 2001.
  
  So it’s nice to take a fresh look at the same subject, in a book written for ordinary business owner. This second edition adds Carroll as a coauthor and updates the original 2012 work, which achieved enough recognition to spawn nine other goldfish books of different colors.
  
  The authors say there’s no such thing as meeting expectations; you either fall short or exceed them (pp. 4-6). And the work you to do retain existing customers pays off far more than the work to bring in new ones (as I’ve advocated for many years).
  
  The book hinges on “lagniappe,” the concept of something extra popularized by New Orleans retailers for generations. In Phelps’, Carroll’s and my own view, that something extra should be unexpected and genuinely wonderful—and of course, it’s best if it costs little or nothing to implement. Think about the first time you heard one of those now-famous Southwest Airlines goofy flight announcements. Weren’t you thrilled and amazed? Didn’t it make you want to fly with them again? And if you heard a second one, then you realized it was acceptable in the corporate culture. Only 1.5 percent of Southwest flights have a humorous announcement, yet that tiny fraction triggers $138 million per year in additional revenue from happy returning customers (p. 38).
  
  The authors see two broad categories of purple goldfish: increasing value and reducing friction—which you find out by identifying 1) opportunities to create wow experiences, and 2) fixable gaps or errors in the customer experience (p. 196). Within those two big tents, at least 10 subsidiary categories fill the fish tank: adding gifts, personalizing the service, reducing wait times or making them a lot more fun, etc. Sometimes, one purple goldfish crosses many categories: Disney uses RFID wrist bands to greet restaurant customers by name and have their orders ready when they walk in, dispense with line-waiting for tickets and photo IDs, and eliminate several other customer annoyances (pp. 123-124). This sets a pretty high bar for the theme park industry.
  
  Once your purple goldfish becomes the norm and everyone else grabs your idea, you need to do something else to keep the appeal fresh.
  
  My favorite section is toward the end, with detailed lists of questions and implementation steps to:
  
  * Help you choose the right purple goldfish for your business using first divergent (out-of-the-box) and then convergent (analytical, narrowing down) thinking, win over internal stakeholders (pp. 204-215);
  * Market your innovation internally, seeking buy-in from all stakeholders (pp. 222-224);
  * Run a pilot, measure the results, implement fully if it’s working (pp. 218-219, 226).
  * Final and very wise advice: NEVER take away an existing purple goldfish (p. 237)!
  * And my very favorite insight: a purple goldfish doesn’t have to be for the direct benefit of a customer or prospect. Helping a cause is also a purple goldfish (p. 92).
  
  Two quibbles: First, I have to question why authors as concerned about customer delight would let this book go to print without an index. I went looking for a specific fact I wanted to retrieve in this review, couldn’t find it in my notes, and had to get myself over to Amazon to search inside the book. NOT a purple goldfish moment, and one that an index would have eliminated. And second, what “genius” came up with this awful subtitle? I’m sure they were pulling from Ken Blanchard’s Raving Fans, but this is a really unfortunate word choice. When I see “raving customers,” I think “angry.” We don’t want furious customers raving at us! We want delighted customers raving about us!
• 
  Balki Kodarapu

  I thoroughly enjoyed the authors' engaging and entertaining style of writing from start to finish. They proved to me that even a dry topic like marketing doesn't have to boring.
  I loved and immediately connected with fascinating stories+anecdotes ranging from a zealous handyman to how the great Walt Disney exceed customer expectations.
  The authors spend the bulk of the book on the "what" and the "how" of exceeding customer expectations and as a result attract raving customers. The 10 types of purple goldfish (the "what) are simple, yet profoundly practical. The powerful stories from TD Bank, Trader Joe's, Nordstrom etc. in the removing friction section of the book are spot-on for the topic. As I read many of these familiar and legendary brand stories, my mind was racing towards ideas that I can experiment in my own little world of marketing.
  
  Thanks to Stan Phelps and Evan Carroll for another gem in the _________ Goldfish series!