Exceptional Customer Service...

"The secret to success is a Commitment to incredible customer service!" — Andrew Mason, Groupon co-founder.

The fun new company with the creative name Groupon was created in 2008, and features a daily deal on the best activities in about any big city, as well as, in 43 different countries around the globe. Groupon provides jobs for around 7,000 people at their Chicago headquarters, along with other locations throughout North America and regional offices around the world.

Groupon's company operations model is pretty simple: "Treat your customers the way you like to be treated." For Groupon, that narrows things down to just a few key principles.

Groupon only sells products and services that they themselves would want to buy. A great price is only half the battle — it's also got to be a great product or service. They strive to make Groupon be an addiction anyone can feel good about. Groupon wants their customers to love using the service. Their objective is to make every single purchase feel too good to be true. If anyone contacts Groupon with a complaint, they will literally do whatever it takes to make things right.

So how did Groupon get started? Groupon grew out of an attempt at forming a company called, "The Point." This company let anyone start a movement by asking people to donate funds or to perform some sort of action as a group. Any financial pledges were not collected until a specific number of people made agreements to participate. "The Point," was supposed to help any and everyone who used the service to come together and solve problems that they couldn't resolve on their own.

Unfortunately, "The Point," failed. Many people would quit after that, but not Andrew. In desperation, his next approach was to take what was working, which was the public's interest in group purchases of discounted products and services from local merchants and focused his new company on this one positive feature.

Groupon's name combines the words "group" and "coupon," and presents an internet audience with significant discounts on many kinds of products and services. "Act now," reads the headline: "You have 'x' number of hours or minutes before this offer expires." That's a familiar sales line with many online companies' web sites, but in this case it is combined with a unique aspect: the user gets the deal only if a certain number of other users sign up for and buy the same thing within the time line limitation. Groupon has ended up doing so well, that late in 2010 the 3-year-old company reportedly refused a $6 billion dollar buy-out offer from Google!

Andrew has figured out how to inject excitement into the process of searching for deals on the Web, and combined that with customer service next to none! The result is an overnight success story that today is on track to exceed $500 million in revenues. They are the only company to reach a $1 billion valuation as fast as YouTube did.

Solid Gold Performance...

It transforms a failure into a learning opportunity that produces a success the second time around when you learn to Think Strategically... Act Tactically... and Execute Brilliantly.

How Did Groupon Become a Gold Mine? By Superior:

Marketing...     Talent...     Administrative Management...

Click on Function... Insert a Do It in your Strategic Plan... then Just DO IT!

Your Thoughts and Observations...

"Guts are a combination of confidence, courage, conviction, strength of character, stick-to-itiveness, pugnaciousness, backbone, and intestinal fortitude. They are mandatory for anyone who wants to get to and stay at the top." ~ D A Benton