I stumbled across a fascinating video on YouTube the other day. Yes, there are non-cat videos on YouTube. It’s pretty cool, actually.
They talked about this series of studies that were conducted at a restaurant. They wanted to test reciprocity (which is just a fancy word for saying you return someone’s favor) among the customer. Basically, the server would give their customers at their table a mint before giving them the bill.
The series of studies showed that the customers who received a mint before their bill increased their tip on average by 3%. That’s pretty cool, right?
It gets even cooler.
When the server gave their customers 2 mints, tips were increased on average by 14%.
Going from 3% to 14% is a big jump!
But it still gets cooler.
When the server gave their customers a mint, handed them their bill, turned to walk away, stopped, turned around once again in order to face their customers and said, “For you nice people…here’s an extra mint.” tips increase on average by 23%!
That’s insane!
Moral of the study (see what I did there? Instead of moral of the story): Customers (or people, rather) will return the favor when you give them a gift. However, it’s not just what you give them that influences their behavior…it’s also how you give it to them.
I want to be absolutely clear and say that I am not talking about manipulation. Don’t be manipulative.
I’m talking about being influential. There’s an astronomical difference.
This is my question for you
As a creative professional who offers a service instead of a product, how can you try this principle?
You can’t exactly say, “Here’s product A and you know what? I like you so much, I’m going to throw in product Z, a value of $x.xx for free.”
So what can you do? The key is to actually add value to the service you’re offering. If you aren’t careful, you can actually devalue your service.
If you’re a photographer and photo retoucher, maybe you could retouch an extra photo of their choice for free and give it to them as a gift. However, that falls more along the lines of giving them a product rather than a service.
What if you’re an illustrator or an interior designer? What could you do? Perhaps it could be something like a hand written thank you note. I actually received a hand written thank you note from Bob Burg after interviewing him for episode 5 of the Launching Creative Podcast.
That was a really awesome move on his part and now I can tell you guys to buy his book, The Go-Giver. I’m not saying that as an affiliate in any way — I’m just saying that because he left a really good impression and I like him.
What if you could do the very same thing for your customers? What if they brought in new customers by raving about you? What can you do to make that happen?
Seriously, I’d love to hear your thoughts. You can leave a comment below or you can tweet at me and let me know.
—Nik Parks, Co-Founder of Launching Creative
