I’ve distilled some lessons from my IKEA story:

1 - Every customer interaction is a golden opportunity, including - no, especially - when the customer is pissed off. Any time you get his attention, make the best use of it. His attention isn’t free.

2 - Your reputation is at stake in every angle of communication with the customer. It doesn’t matter if it’s your CEO, your outsourced vendor, or your customer service rep that screws up. To the customer it all reflects on the company, because…

3 - Everyone sells the same thing - positive experiences.

4 - Almost everything we buy has some characteristics of a luxury good. To boldly make up terms, our demand elasticity of service (like price elasticity of demand) is extremely elastic. If someone else has better service, they will get all of the business.

5 - Incentivize every level of your organization to provide positive experiences, from the front line on up.

6 - No one cares if you mess up, only how you fix it. Treat us like people.

7 - The traditional cost-benefit analysis for pleasing unhappy customers is broken. If you could snub the nobodies and pamper the newspaper editors, you’d be fine. But you can’t tell the difference between customers who will go away and customers who will spread the word. Everyone has a megaphone.

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