The WOW Factor

by on May 16, 2011 at 4:30 pm in Community Management, Foursquare

By Dan Bergeron

Last evening I was sitting at home with a friend, not feeling inclined to prepare a meal, yet my stomach was less than satisfied with my current state of hunger.  My friend suggested ordering pizza as they had a brochure they had received in their mailbox from a place called Naked Pizza and it looked intriguing.  Before I got off the couch, I looked on foursquare to see if there were any local tips for the pizza joint.  As it turned out, there was a 50% off your entire take-out purchase with a foursquare check-in.   To me that seemed to be a pretty great hook, but it almost seemed too good to be true.  When we walked into NAKED PIZZA the first thing that stood out was the bright green walls and the cleanliness.

Before we ordered a few pies I asked the counter attendant about the foursquare special.  He took a look at my Blackberry, read the special right off my foursquare app and was intrigued.  The man kindly said he was not aware of the special but agreed 50% was a great deal.  A few moments later he got the manager on duty to come up to the front, and proceeded to ask her about the special.   Turns out, it was not too good to be true, the foursquare special was indeed valid.    As we started ordering a few pies, the counter attendant began to explain more about the organic ingredients, gave us a detailed description of how the dough is actually made and where the ingredients come from.  Then he advised us to have a seat and test out the iPads on the far table, while we waited for our pizza.  I took this opportunity to check out their website, find them on twitter and then proceeded to tweet about the great experience I had before even tasting the pizza.

When I got home I took a few moments to think about the experience I just had at Naked Pizza.  As I was enjoying the organic ‘chemical free’ pizza on the comfort of my couch I looked down at the box and noticed right on the box they had ‘Follow us! Twitter.com/NakedPizza’.   After this whole experience it really made appreciate the steps Naked Pizza is taking to WOW their customers.  As someone who fits right into their target market, a healthy, active, 20-something who eats, breaths and sleeps social media, Naked Pizza really hit one out of the park on this one.  No matter what the brand or business, it is always important to WOW the customers.  Ideally, you want the customer leaving a place of business talking about how great their experience was, and that the brand went over the top.  When a brand delivers beyond your expectations, when they add a great customer experience, it will create a buzz, people will talk, and that brand over time will build a strong rapport with their customers.

How does your company create the WOW Factor?

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  • http://justicewordlaw.com Justice Wordlaw IV

    This made me want to go their and have some of their pizza from this experience that you have had. When you see a deal like that and it seems to good to be true some times it is but then sometimes the deal is that amazing. That pizza restaurant has done an amazing job via social media and will probably have a lot more success than other competitors around them just for that bit of effort they are placing forth.

  • Dan Bergeron

    Glad you enjoyed hearing about my experience. It was a great unexpected surprise on what would have been a normal Sunday evening. The company is definitely growing fast and when it comes to social media…. “they get it.”

  • http://www.culturecycles.com Brian

    Sounds like an awesome experience! I’m excited to see more businesses in the food industry get on this level.

  • Beja Foster

    LOVE IT! Great branding, but even more so… great authenticity- they are who they say they are.

  • Nicole

    I completely agree with this “wow” factor concept. I think nowadays companies need to focus a lot more on customer service than simply their product alone. A great example of “wow” worthy customer service is Zappos.com. The simple shoe-based e-commerce site has seen profitable sales in large part due to their customer service and company image. Excellent post!

  • Luys

    When I was reading this article the only thing that I was thinking was “this is paid ad of Naked pizza”. Don’t warry it is ok, because +1 person now knows about NP :)

  • Dan Bergeron

    Nicole – You are spot on with Zappos, they do a great job WOWing their customers as well. We actually have anther blog post from a few weeks ago that discusses on a personal experience with Zappos. http://likeable.com/2011/04/great-service-from-zappos_service-the-importance-of-brand-ambassadors/

    Luys- It is interesting that this sounds like it be “paid for” by Naked Pizza. They are actually not a client of ours, but I think this is a great example of the WOW Factor. Because I had such a great experience there, I am going to personally promote the brand to others as if they were paying me to do so. I think this is in fact more powerful, shows how important attaining that Wow Factor really is.

  • http://www.armacommunications.com Tiffany @ Arma Communications

    So many people fail to recognize the power of social media, local marketing and the fact that everyone has the internet in their pocket where ever they go these days. This is definitely a great Wow example of a company who has their eye on the ball and they are definitely fully engaged in the game. Just awesome! Social media makes it so easy to reach out to customers — but so few of them really “get it.”

  • Dan Bergeron

    you are absolutely correct Tiffany, thanks for your insight! tweet me @dangbergeron

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