If you haven’t yet bought into social media for business, I’m hoping this simple story will change your mind. If you don’t use social media to promote your products and services, the very least you can do is provide stellar customer service and ensure your buyers have a fantastic experience with your brand.

I was about to make an online order with one of my favorite brands, RXBAR, which is a whole food protein bar with minimal ingredients. Their branding is very clean and minimal too, which I’m a big fan of!

I sent them a DM on Twitter to ask them a question before I ordered.

“Can I buy just ONE Mint Chocolate bar instead of purchasing a whole box of 12? I would like to try that flavor, but don’t want to commit to a whole box without knowing if I like it or not.”

Guess what? They offered to send me a free sample of Mint Chocolate, and any other flavors I would like to try. I gave my email and street address and they said they would be on their way soon.

If you reach out to a brand with a question like mine, my main piece of advice is to be polite. Don’t EXPECT them to send you anything for free. I asked if I could buy one bar since they are not sold individually on the site, and they were kind enough to send a few samples to a loyal customer for free.

Social media managers like people who are polite, considering all of the negativity and complaints that are thrown at them every day (especially in the food industry… yikes!). Chances are, if you’re polite, you’ll get a response in a timely manner, and you’ll probably get more than you originally asked for!

But, that’s not all… they even gave me a 20% off code for my next online order, which caused me to buy 2 boxes instead of 1.

Stellar customer service, genius marketing. 🙂

Their social media community manager and I exchanged GIFs and I basically confessed my love for their brand.

Let this be a lesson to your business – SURPRISE your customers by going above and beyond their expectations! They will stay loyal to your brand and probably spend more $$ than they intended to. 🙂