Terry Watson, president of consulting firm Easify Inc., began his education session at the ASI Show Chicago by asking attendees one question: What’s the biggest mistake most people in your industry make that prevents them from being more profitable?

Answers included underservicing clients, discounting, lack of strong relationships, not understanding your numbers and trying to be everything to everybody. “Those are great, but you couldn’t be more wrong,” Watson said.

Terry Watson educating at the ASI Show Chicago.

In his presentation on “The Yelp Effect: Pleasing the Empowered Customer,” the Chicago-based businessman shared anecdotes, memes, book recommendations and plenty of practical advice on how to increase profitability. The Yelp Effect, Watson explained, is creating a business that inspires other people, particularly customers, to promote your business – something firms in promo and other industries fail to do consistently and thus the big mistake Watson was referencing. In the age of social media, influencers and customers have the power to impact your bottom line with one negative review.

To prevent that, Watson suggests focusing on customer experience rather than customer service.

“The phrase ‘customer service’ doesn’t bring up good emotions,” Watson said. “When you hear ‘we’re going to transfer you to customer service,’ you most likely sigh. By focusing on experience and value rather than service, customers will remember you much more fondly.”

When you’re the one having to address customer service, Watson said it’s important to remember that “a complaint is a gift.” It allows you to realize something isn’t working, so you need to tweak it. “Only have a problem once,” Watson reiterated. “You need to create some type of policy to make sure a problem doesn’t happen again.”

"Don't focus on customer service. Focus on customer experience."

Terry Watson of Easify, Inc. #ASIChicago pic.twitter.com/MNzcTNLP4U

— John Corrigan (@JCorr_ASI) July 13, 2021

Education is a tremendous way to add to the customer experience. That means informing your customers of new products, tools, events and news that could impact their business and industry. “Tell people what’s about to happen before it happens,” Watson said. “Give them an article or video to back up what you’re saying.”

One of the best ways to educate yourself, Watson suggested, is to read your competition’s Yelp reviews. It will give you tremendous insight into how they’re providing an experience to their customers and what you can do differently. At the same time, remember that your competitors are likely studying your Yelp reviews, too, if you have them.

“2021 is the year of the reviews,” Watson said. “If your competitors have testimonials and you don’t, it makes you look suspicious.”