When I’m giving speeches to groups of small business owners or working with them to build their own marketing systems, I tell them everything we do in business is marketing; from how we answer our phones, to our billing, to how we treat future and existing customers. Marketing is about more than attracting new customers to do business with us – it s about keeping, nurturing, and “wowing” the ones we have so they buy from us again and again and rant and rave about our company to everyone they know.
I had some customer experiences lately that I thought I’d share and see what you all think….
I recently moved into a new apartment. It’s one of those large apartment communities with an onsite office and a team of people to assist tenants and run the property. Here’s what my experience has been like in my short stay here so far:
I just want clean jeans!
We have onsite laundry facilities, which is nice. Before I moved in they told me the machines take cards which you can pre-load with cash to save you the trouble of having to scrape and buy quarters! “This is convenient”, I thought.
Well what they didn’t tell me is that you have to actually purchase the card for $5 and you can’t just go to the laundry room and use your ATM card to load this laundry card, no, you can only load it at the office during office hours and you can only use fives or twenties; no ones, no tens, no change. Oh and the office does not provide change—I walked in with a ten dollar bill my first time and was told I’d have to walk a block to 7-11 (and buy something) to get change.
Frustrated, I thought “the heck with it, I have enough quarters lying around, I’ll just use my quarters to do my laundry today”. So I go back to my apartment, gather up my laundry and a handful of quarters and head to my new laundry room for the first time. Well didn’t I feel like quite the fool, the coin operated machines don’t take the coins! So they got me—I have to purchase their little card and I have to play by their rules if I want clean clothes. So this is how it’s going to be, huh?
So this “convenience” turned out to be an inconvenient money-making opportunity for the management company—not a great start.
Rip me off—please!
Next, I left my keys in the lock of the front door after walking my dog Capone one day and they were stolen right out of out of the door (I heard the “perp” take them…ok, too many detective shows!). In a panic I called the office, which is about 100 yards away from my front door. I told them the story and asked if they could change my locks right away. “Sure,” they said, “just come to the office and give us a check for $95—you have to pay up front.”
Me: “Umm, but someone has the key to my apartment, I don’t want to leave…”
Them: “Well, we can’t change your locks until we have a check—and it has to be a check from the bank account on file; no cash, no money orders and no cashier’s check.”
Me: “Umm… but someone has the key to my apartment…”
Them: “Well you have to pay up front or we can’t change your locks.”
So this is what I heard: “Our $95 is more important than your safety and this is your problem, figure it out.”
They wouldn’t change the locks first—or offer to come and get the check, or even have the maintenance guy get the check from me before he did the work. No, they insisted I leave my apartment, to which a stranger had a key and hand deliver them payment. I’m not sure which part of “a stranger has a key to my apartment” they didn’t understand.
Alternate scenarios
I’m not writing this to complain or vent about less-than-great customer service (O.K., maybe I am a little), I’m writing this because these are perfect examples of the little things businesses do—or don’t do—that influence customer experience. These are two great examples of where a company could have “wowed” me but instead made me feel like a mere cog in their gigantic cash-wheel.
Imagine how delighted I’d have been if upon move-in they handed me a laundry card loaded with $10 and said, “Here is your free laundry card to get you started” (you could even bury the cost in the security deposit, if you must!). Instead of feeling nickel and dimed, inconvenienced, and sorry that I’m living in a place run by a huge faceless, uncaring, inhuman corporation that only cares about the bottom line, I’d have been happy and thankful.
Or what if one of the three women who work in the office had offered to walk the 100 yards to my apartment to pick up my check for the lock change fee so that I didn’t have to worry that I might be walking into an ambush when I came back to my apartment? Imagine how I’d have felt if they put my safety ahead of their lousy $95 and “corporate policy.” Do you think that would have made me a raging fan? I probably would have been writing a very different blog!
A lesson for all business owners
So I challenge you to reflect: what do you do in your business to make your customers feel special? To make them feel taken care of? And, what do you do to make them feel put out and inconvenienced?
It may be the little things you never even considered. I advise business owners all the time to think of ways they can “wow” their customers every day—it isn’t easy and you need to step outside of your business and look at it with a fresh set of eyes (customer surveys are a great tool to do this). But I guarantee, if you can achieve that your business will thrive!
Carolyn Higgins is the President and founder of Fortune Marketing Company. Her personal mission is to help small businesses stop wasting money on advertising and promotions that don’t deliver and help business owners implement an effective marketing system that will bring in more customers—consistently. For more information about Fortune Marketing Company visit the Fortune Marketing Company website or blog.
