Evan Carmichael argues that businesses grow when they listen to customers and make it easy for them to contribute. He contrasts Zipcar's frustrating support process with how a viewer named Arturo offered to translate his videos into Spanish, creating a new multilingual channel that helped everyone.
Chapters
Support your customers. You are going to have some customers who love what you're doing, who love what you're all about, and will have ideas on how to make your product or your service better. Listen to them and find ways to work with them to make it happen. Here's an example of one gone wrong, okay? I use Zipcar. I'm a, I'm a new Zipcar user. I'm a fan. I made a video on my first Zipcar experience that you can find on YouTube if you want. But I have a problem with Zipcar. The problem I have right now is some guy always parks it outside of the parking zone and they get a ticket for it. Now, I love the company. I want to see them do well. I don't want to see them get tickets and pass it on to the other guy. And all I want to find is, is there a way for me to park this thing properly? I walk by the car, I see it outside the parking zone, and I get pissed off that I can't really do anything about it. So the answer from Zipcar is, call us, we'll make a fake reservation so you can move the car, get into the right spot. To do this, this is a crazy process, okay? I call in, you wait online, you have to wait for an attendant, you have to go through all these options, and the last one is speak to somebody. Finally get to speak to somebody. Actually, even before that, you've got to enter in your information. You have to enter in your number, your birthdate, uh, forget what else I had to enter in. Okay, then I get somebody on the line. I get asked all that information again. Why did I just pop it into my phone if you're going to ask me again? Then I have to explain where I am in the car and what I'm trying to do, and they don't understand what I'm trying to do. So I'm sitting here for 15 minutes on the phone with somebody just so that I can move the Zipcar into the proper point, like move it 6 feet forward. And it's so frustrating that I don't want to do it. Like, I'm not gonna call them again. The process is broken. This is a great idea to allow your customers to help you, right, help the business but they make it too hard to do. Make it easy because your best ideas are gonna come from your customers. This could be a whole new program for them. Here's an example of it working. I got an email from one of my YouTube viewers, Arturo. Arturo watches all my videos. Hey, Arturo! And he said, Evan, I love your stuff. I want to help translate this into Spanish. I've thought about going multilingual a few times, but I don't know other languages really well. He said, I will help do this for you. It's a great idea. Help me do this. But he didn't have any resources. He didn't know what the process was. So we started by creating a different channel, and then I helped find software for him that would make it easier for him to translate. And all my videos now, everybody can translate them. If you look in the description of this video, if you like it, you can translate it into another language. So other people can benefit from it. That's across all my videos now, and that's thanks to an idea from Arturo, from one of my viewers. You have to embrace this stuff. That's where the real change is going to happen. Don't make it difficult for ideas to come from your customers and start making changes. The idea here is you want to make a movement. You want your customers feeling like they were involved and they want to give you great ideas to help move this thing forward. When I think of movements, I think of Martin Luther King and the human rights movement. And Martin Luther King, he didn't come up with a lot of the ideas himself. You know, Rosa Parks sitting on the bus as that protest? He didn't come up with that idea. The kids who sat in at cafeterias who wouldn't serve black people and just sat there? In a peaceful protest? He didn't come up with that idea, but he heard about these isolated ideas and he gave them attention and he gave them resources and he gave them his support, and they turned it into a huge movement, one of the most significant in American history. It can be the same thing for your company. So when customers come to you— Zipcar, and they're trying to help you become better. Listen to them, give them resources, give them support, because these guys will fuel your movement and take your company to places that you only dreamed were possible. Believe. For those of you watching, you like the video, please give it a thumbs up below, subscribe to the channel if you liked it, and leave a comment. I want to hear what you have to think. Leave a comment below, ask a question, I'll make a video response. Thank you so much, and I'll see you soon.
