What Great Musicians Can Teach Us About Customer Service

This article answers the question: What can great musicians and bands teach us about customer service?

Answer: Great musicians and bands teach us that consistently delivering an experience people love turns first-time customers into loyal fans.

Many of you know I love music. I’d like to play a regular gig with my own band, but I have to settle for playing along with some of my favorite musicians like Eric Clapton and Carlos Santana – on YouTube! 

As different as music and customer service may seem, they have more in common than you might think. I’ve always wanted to write about the connection between customer service and music. The more I thought about it, the more parallels I found.  

In my book The Cult of the Customer, I teach five phases, or cults, that every customer experiences with a business:  

1. Uncertainty: The first time someone does business with you, they are uncertain as to how the experience will be. They hope for the best, but until they experience it (Cult No. 3), they aren’t sure. Think about the time you heard a song for the first time. You may have recognized the recording artist, but you may not have been sure you liked the new song. It wasn’t until you experienced it three or four times that you finally liked it. 

2. Alignment: This is getting all of your employees headed in the same direction and delivering on your brand promise. As it applies to music, if you have a favorite recording artist known for jazz, and they record a country song, they have changed direction. That doesn’t mean the song is bad. It’s just not what fans expected. In other words, based on what you expect, they are out of alignment. 

3. Experience: This was mentioned in the first cult, uncertainty. It isn’t until a customer experiences you and your brand promise (from alignment) several times that they begin to know and understand what the experience of doing business with you will be like. Again, think about the song you hear for the third or fourth time. You begin to recognize and enjoy it because it’s familiar.  

4. Ownership: This is very closely linked to experience. Once the experience is predictable, you begin to “own” it. You know what to expect. Think of that song you’ve heard several times. You are now humming it to yourself. You immediately recognize it when you hear it on the radio. You may even start to remember the words because you’ve heard them so many times. 

5. The Cult of Amazement: As you go through the first four phases or cults, you reach this one when you actually like what you are experiencing, and it’s predictable. You know this is how it will be when you do business with this company. When you like the song and the recording artist, you become a fan. You download their music, and you might even pay to see them perform live. They have reached the level of Amazement. You went from barely knowing the song or the artist (uncertainty), to liking the type of music they played (alignment), to recognizing the actual songs (experience), to looking forward to what the next new song will be (ownership), to paying money to see or hear the artist (amazement).  

The best musicians and bands don’t create one hit and disappear. They consistently deliver music that their fans love. The best companies do the same thing, turning first-time customers into loyal fans who come back, spend more, and tell others about you.