From Impressed to Obsessed: 12 Principles for Turning Customers and Employees into Lifelong Fans

CHAPTER 15

Pay Attention to the Details

In January 2020, Aviva, one of the United Kingdom’s largest insurers, sent thousands of customers an email addressed to “Michael.” Problem was, most of them weren’t named “Michael.”

Upon learning of the error, the firm sent out another email to those same customers, apologizing for calling them Michael and explaining that a “temporary technical error” was to blame.

One of the affected customers (an “Andrew,” for the record) was interviewed by the BBC and had this to say about the snafu: “Getting a first name wrong is one thing, but what if it was my data—my address or policy information—being sent to someone else instead?”¹ Andrew’s reaction is a great example of what I call the Lampshade Effect—the ...