Anything You Want

Little things make all the difference

If you find even the smal est way to make people smile, they'l remember you

more for that smile than for al your other fancy business-model stuff.

Here are some things that made a huge difference on the CD Baby website:

Because we shipped FedEx at 5 p.m. each day, customers would often cal and

ask, “What time is it there? Do I stil have time to get it sent today?”

So I added two little lines of programming code that counted how many hours

and minutes remained until 5 p.m. and then showed the result by the shipping

options.  “You  have  5  hours,  18  minutes  until  our  next  FedEx  shipment.”

Customers LOVED this!

We answered our phone within two rings, always—7 a.m. to 10 p.m., seven days

a week. Phones were everywhere, so even if the customer service rep was busy,

someone  in  the  warehouse  could  pick  up.  Al  anyone  had  to  do  was  say  “CD

Baby!”  Customers  LOVED  this!  Someone  actual  y  picking  up  the  phone  at  a

company is so rare that musicians would often tel me later at conferences that it

was the main reason they decided to go with CD Baby— they could always talk

to  a  real  person  immediately.  Al  employees  knew  that  as  long  as  we  weren't

completely swamped, they should take a minute and get to know the cal er a bit.

Ask about her music. Ask how it's going. Yes, it would lead to twenty-minute

conversations sometimes, but those people became lifelong fans.

Every  outgoing  email  has  a  “From:”  name,  right?  Why  not  use  that  to  make

people smile, too? With one line of code, I made it so that every outgoing email

customized  the  “From:”  field  to  be  “CD  Baby  loves  {firstname}.”  So  if  the

customer's name was Susan, every email she got from us would say it was from

“CD Baby loves Susan.” Customers LOVED this!

Sometimes,  after  we  had  done  the  forty-five  minutes  of  work  to  add  a  new

album to the store, the musician would change his mind and ask us to do it over

again with a different album cover or different audio clips. I wanted to say yes

but let him know that this was real y hard to do, so I made a policy that made us

both smile:  “We'l do  anything for  a  pizza.” If  you needed  a big  special  favor,

we'd give you the number of our local pizza delivery place. If you bought us a

pizza, we'd  do any  favor you  wanted.  When we'd  tel people  about this  on  the

phone, they'd often laugh, not believing we were serious. But we'd get a pizza

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every few weeks. I'd often hear from musicians later that this was the moment

they fel in love with us.

At the end of each order, the last page of the website would ask, “Where did you

hear of this artist? We'l pass them any message you write here.”

Customers would often take the time to write things like, “Heard your song on

WBEZ  radio  last  night.  Searched  Yahoo!.  Found  it  here.  I'd  love  to  have  you

play at our school!” The musicians absolutely loved getting this information, and

it  always  led  to  the  customer  and  musician  getting  in  touch  directly.  This  is

something that big stores like Amazon would never do.

Also  at  the  end  of  each  order,  there  was  a  box  that  would  ask,  “Any  special

requests?” One time, someone said, “I'd love some cinnamon gum.”

Since one of the guys in the warehouse was going to the store anyway, he picked

up some cinnamon gum and included it in the package. One time, someone said,

“If  you  could  include  a  smal  ,  rubber  squid,  I  would  appreciate  it.  If  this  is

unobtainable, a real squid would do.” Just by chance, a customer from Korea had

sent us a packaged filet of squid. So the shipping guys included it in the box with

the  other  customer's  CDs.  See  the  customer  tel  the  story  himself  in  this  great

video: http://sivers.org/squid.

Even if you want to be big someday, remember that you never need to act like a

big boring company.

Over  ten  years,  it  seemed  like  every  time  someone  raved  about  how  much  he

loved CD Baby, it was because of one of these little fun human touches.