Want your customers to come back? QCS.

QCS – Quality Customer Service. A term many big business chains and local retailers lose focus of very easily. When we think of the word Marketing i think people forget that customer service is the most important part of marketing. Marketing is often confused with advertising, people think putting an ad in the paper or a radio ad is a great marketing plan. WRONG Marketing is much more that but, advertising is part of a good marketing plan. We often loose focus of the things that are free and easy to implement that make a bigger impact than any advertisement ever will do.

What is your competitive advantage? If you answer: price, product or location you might be in trouble. If your price is what sets you from the rest it easy for your competitors to drop their price and be right in the same game as you and then you have NO advantage. Product- your have the best burger in town. What happens when a restaurant down the road opens up and has a better burger than you? You have NO competitive advantage anymore. Location – “we are the only gas station right on the lake so you can come gas up your boats.” Again what happens when someone else opens a gas station on the other side of the lake, You have NO competitive advantage.  Get my drift? Now say you create an EXPERIENCE, something so great that people will talk about it to all their friends and family and the people they will meet for the next 2 months, now that is a competitive advantage. In all scenarios above having your own unique experience is what really will draw people to your business again and again, and NO ONE can take that experience away from you. It all starts with your customer service. Times are different than they used to be if you don’t treat your customers great and give them a reason to come back they won’t come back because there are other business out there that are waiting to treat you customers better than you.

I want to share this story with you from Bob and Susan Negan of Whizbang Training. (Sidenote if you want really great marketing tips subscribe to their e-mails and or get out and see them.

Our oldest son, now 13, has grown about 4 inches in the last six months. And he’s been begging for some new shorts that actually fit before the weather gets  hot here in Michigan.Being a teenager, he had clear ideas about where he wanted to shop – that mall store that carries lots of stylish basics and rhymes with The MAP. So we headed to the mall, dragging his 11 year old brother along.In short order the two of them had quite a pile of summer t’s and shorts on the counter. Their haul added up to a pretty good chunk of change, so when the sales associate offered 30% off if I opened a store credit card I went for it – even though I have resisted that offer for many, many years.

So far, so good.

I was happy. My kids were happy. The store had to be happy – big sale PLUS a new charge card customer.

And then…

Two of the items had to be sent from another store because the store we were in was out of the right sizes. While I was on the phone giving my shipping address it happened.

“That will be an extra $6 for shipping.”

REALLY? I was standing right in their store (not on the Internet, not shopping via catalog), they were out of the product, I was purchasing hundreds of dollars of other stuff, had opened a credit card, and they were charging me extra to buy those two items?

I was &#%$#&ed off.

It wasn’t the six bucks. It was the principle of the thing.

When I pressed the guy on the phone about the shipping charge he said:

  • “Gas prices have gone up, so we’ve had to start charging for shipping.”
    What about the gas I had to burn driving in to their store? Did my gas somehow miraculously cost less than theirs?and…
  • “When you spend enough on your credit card you’ll be at the Silver Level and you’ll get all your shipping for free!” Not what a brand new card holder wants to hear.

Bottom line: neither the guy on the phone nor the gal I was working with in the store did the right thing and waived my measly $6 shipping fee.

I don’t think they could. It was “the policy.”

And so, for a very tiny fee, a good customer – previously very happy about spending hundreds of dollars – left mad.And in no hurry to shop there again. And certainly in no hurry to use that store credit card again.I have lots of shopping to do for myself in the near future (and my clothes cost lots more than my kid’s clothes!) but their store and their associated brands are now very low on my list.

Penny wise (they got that $6 shipping!) and pound foolish (my future purchases will be going somewhere else.)

So what’s the moral of the story? What does this mean for you?

  1. Take a moment to stop and think about policies, procedures, anything in your business that might be penny wise and pound foolish. Are there things that you are doing to save a penny that might be &#%$#&ing off your good customers and costing you sales down the road?
  2. If you do have restrictive policies in place, at least make sure your staff has the authority to waive those policies in the right situation. Train them and empower them!
Independent retailers have a real advantage over huge chains when it comes to stuff like this. LOVE your customers. The money will follow.