Let me set the scene, our New York landlord recently increased the rent. Nothing exciting there but I swung by the office to discuss terms of our lease, they were essentially trying to persuade us to stay for an extra year instead of six months. This is part of the conversation that stuck:

“But… we’d really like you to stay, you’ve been great tenants”.

This wasn’t exactly a surprise. I mean, we’ve not had to go into the office all year and always paid rent on time, this stuck because that’s the first time the landlord has said anything positive to us.

To break this down, we’re a customer paying them an extortionate amount each year. In any other Business to Consumer transaction of that sum you’d expect some thanks, maybe a christmas card, a newsletter or two and some snazzy social campaign to make me feel part of a ‘community’. Instead we get nothing all year, and that’s really stuck with me.

I had a similar experience when getting new glasses last week, I went into my opticians, waited in line, was passed between store assistants, asked to wait five minutes and eventually handed my prescription without a smile or thanks.

Compare this to the experience I had with millennial favorite Warby Parker; I walked in and was immediately offered help by a friendly assistant, he stayed with me as we chose a pair of glasses, keen to come across as friendly but not pushy he gave honest feedback and once we settled on a pair, walked me over to the checkout and sorted me out.

Throughout the twenty minutes or so I was in the store, the guy used my first name, chatted about the UK and made jokes about soccer. Most importantly he then emailed me all of the information I could need and welcomed me “to Warby Parker”. As if somehow that’s it, I’m part of a cult and won’t ever leave (he’s probably right).

I use these examples to show how different community marketing can be, I have no warm and fuzzy feeling towards our landlord or old opticians, but Warby Parker, I open their weekly newsletter and followed them on Instagram. In other words I feel like I’m part of their community, a valued customer who they want to keep coming back.

It’s key for modern brands to do the same, partially for repeat business and partially for the word of mouth advertising given to them by happy customers.

With very little effort a brand can turn consumers into advocates. My landlord could easily have me recommend them to friends by somehow engaging us or just checking in to see how we’re getting on. The opticians could have kept me with the same assistant and taken the time to learn my name rather than calling me Sir that left me feeling like ‘just another customer’.

Why?

Because I’m an entitled Millennial, the world should be about me and company’s should make me feel special. If I’m giving you my money I want you to get to know me as a person. That means they should serve up a personalized experience I’ll actually enjoy and want to share.

It’s a fine balance between coming across as synthetic and forced (looking at you Starbucks with my misspelt name) and understanding and friendly. I’m not saying every single experience needs to be personalized and seamless, but as a generation we have incredibly high expectations from brands and won’t be afraid to share the good and bad experiences with our online followers. We want brands to make an effort and come up with intuitive ways to captivate our oh so long attention spans.

Of course I’m exaggerating to an extent, but look back at the brand experiences you’ve had over the past few months and just think about the positives and the negatives. What were the little touches that stuck out and made you want to talk about a certain brand, how did they ‘surprise and delight’?