Talk Triggers: The Complete Guide to Creating Customers with Word of Mouth

by Jay Baer

At FreshBooks, cofounder Mike McDerment describes how his client services team is systematically empowered to deliver small storytelling moments for customers. “We were following one of our customers on Twitter and we saw that she got stood up for a date. We sent her a bouquet of flowers saying, ‘Hey, we’d never stand you up.’ You sort of can’t plan these things. You gotta be open and then sort of, you know, take action.” At that level of execution, what the FreshBooks team is accomplishing is not quite an actual talk trigger. It actually borders on being a surprise-and-delight stunt, which is not a talk trigger. But the idea behind it has the potential to be operationalized further and turned into a real differentiator that capitalizes on our key requirements and sets FreshBooks apart from other accounting software providers. What other software company on the planet have you heard about that sends its customers flowers?