Solicit referrals to both strong and weak links: “Please recommend us to your colleagues, and recommend those colleagues talk about us to their colleagues.”
Researchers at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg conclude that when you ask a current customer to make a referral, you also encourage them to use a laptop or personal computer, rather than a smartphone, to compose and send the request to each referred individual. That’s because referrals made via smartphone tend to be shorter and contain less positive content than those made on the larger devices, but longer, more positive recommendations stimulate better follow-through by the referral recipient.
Those inferior characteristics of smartphone-based messaging can be attributed to how the small size of the screen and keyboard on the device make it more challenging to compose the referral. At the same time, the portability and ubiquity of smartphones could easily result in a greater number of referral messages sent out in response to your request than if the referring customer waits to do it on a laptop or PC. In accord with this, another of the researchers’ recommendations is to make it as easy as possible for a referral message to be completed on a smartphone. Auto-completion and pre-formulated text modules help here. Actually, these also could be helpful for composing a referral on a laptop or PC.
Studies at City University of New York and Pennsylvania State University indicate that what you’d best include in any pre-formatted text modules depends on the degree of familiarity the recipient of the referral message currently has with the proposed supplier. If they’ve had few if any dealings with the organization previously, the best text should be thoroughly positive. This relaxes perceptions of risk generated by the prospect of transacting with an unknown.
But if the recommended supplier is already well-known to the referral message recipient, text which qualifies the referrer’s expertise in making the recommendation is more important than whether the proposed supplier is described as flawless. In addition, researchers at Italy’s LUISS University and University of Bari suggest that in this latter situation, the text be more abstract than concrete, describing general upsides and concerns in doing business with the supplier rather than giving detailed examples.
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Minimize Customer Turnover Image at top of post based on photo by Natalya Letunova from Unsplash
