Could Earplugs Improve Your Business?
January 12, 2008
“Here is a simple but powerful rule - always give people more than what they expect to get.”
Nelson Boswell
Giving your customer more than they expect to get can cost you as little as a pair of earplugs. But it’s often these small gestures that make you stand out above “ordinary businesses”.
For example, the other day, I visited a dental hygienist to have my teeth cleaned and polished.
“Does it hurt?” she asked.
“No,” I replied, “but the worst part is the dreadful noise.”
And it was truly awful.
“That’s what all my customers say,” she said.
Now, if you’d had that much customer feedback, you would do something about it right?
As I left, I joked that I would bring earplugs next time. Of course, what I really meant was, “You should supply earplugs.” And I hope she does.
She has a great opportunity to deal with her main customer complaint, and it probably won’t cost her a thing. In fact, she’ll probably be able to charge more, because she will be providing a service which is better than the competition.
But, it’s not the actual earplugs the customer is willing to pay more for. It’s the benefit of not having to put up with the horrendous noise.
Of course, earplugs may not work for your business. But I bet that if you examine your business critically, through the eyes of your customer - you could also find room for improvement, at a low cost.
Take a look at the following examples, then think about what you could do to improve your own business.
Business: Doughnut Shop
Customer problem - Eating donuts makes your hands sticky. Plus, you’re in a rush, which is why you bought food to go. But, by the time you’ve waited in line to go the bathroom to wash your hands, you might as well have eaten in a cafe. Maybe next time you will.
Business Solution - Offer a free hand wipe to the customer with every donut.
Business: Dry Cleaners
Customer Problem - You need your work clothes dry cleaned, but it’s a real pain to co-ordinate, as the dry cleaners are only open during office hours. How are you supposed to drop off and collect your clothes?
Business Solution: Offer a free deliver and collection service, or late night opening.
Business: Insurance Company
Customer Problem: When you call to make a claim, they keep you hanging on line forever. Then when you finally get through, they tell you that you need to call a different number - and the same thing happens. This is a major inconvenience - you’re kitchen has just burned down and you’re stressed. By the time you’ve waited on line, you’re more stressed. It might just be a whole lot less stressful to take out insurance with a company who answers the phone quickly next time.
Business Solution: Offer an online callback service, so you’re not keeping the customer hanging on. Remember, most customers will hate you if you keep them waiting on the phone for 15 minutes, but if you promise a callback within 30 minutes instead, they’ll probably be more than happy.
Business: Coffee Shop
Customer Problem: When it’s raining, there’s nowhere to put your umbrella. Everyone has to carry in their umbrellas and water drips on the floor making it very slippy. It’s a nice coffee shop, but is it really worth the risk of breaking your neck? Maybe it would be safer to go somewhere else when it’s raining.
Business Solution - Provide an umbrella stand at the entrance to the shop.
Business: Online Store
Customer Problem: Delivery took way longer than you expected. And there was no fast delivery option. You order online for convenience and speed and this just wasn’t convenient or fast. Next time, you’ll order from a store that offers a 24 hour delivery service.
Business Solution: Offer more delivery options. It won’t cost more, as customers looking for fast delivery are usually willing to pay extra.
Can you see how simple and cheap some of these solutions are? And it’s pretty obvious that by implementing them these businesses will be more likely to get repeat business from them customers isn’t it?
Now, think about what you can do to improve your business. Look at it from the customers point of view. What problems might they encounter using your business? Is there a simple, cost effective solution to this problem?
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You’re so right. The bleeding obvious stuff you can do to improve the customer’s experience is staring us in the face.
I had that problem.
I had racked my brains for a long time scratching the surface for things which improved the customer’s experience.
And the big one, which was so obvious I nearly missed it, was responding faster.
Don’t get me wrong, we’re good. But the client wants a fast fix when things go wrong with their IT.
We’re not able to do this yet, but we want to SOLVE 95% of all reported incidents within 4 hours.
So by setting the target, it has focused our minds. And straight away you start to stop operational challenges which can be fixed to achieve it.
So we’re working through that list. When we’ve got there - which may take a while - one component is more and better engineers who take time to find, we can boast about it on our web-site and elsewhere.
That will draw customers to us and away from competitors arguable more than the other stuff we have done.
So it’s good to look at the really obvious stuff you can improve.
Ian Denny’s last blog post..Junk Mail - It’s Doubled. So What? Let’s Ask Our Fairy Godmother
Ian - I know what you mean - sometimes it’s a whole lot easier to go into someone elses business and troubleshoot problems immediately. But, as you say, often a problem can be staring you in the face in your own business and you don’t realise.
I think it would be great if you could offer that service. I know you mentioned it the other day and there are no similar companies offering it in your area so it would be a brilliant USP.
But, I can understand how hard it would be to co-ordinate.
We offer 2 hour service and did this in the last business too, but only for emergencies. All the non emergencies are 48 hours.
But, it sounds like this would be something you would be offering to everyone who had a contract with you, which is probably much more complicated to organise.
And I suppose, what you really need to do is start monitoring every single job you do now, and the response times you are able to achieve - if you haven’t been doing so already.
This will give you an idea of how many staff you will need to offer the service. And then you will need to work out how much extra it’s costing you to provide the service and how much extra you’ll need to charge the customers.
Then finally you’ll need to approach your customers to see whether they’ll be interested in paying more for a faster service.
Most will and the additional cost may not be a whole heap more anyway.
And by offering 95% instead of 100%, you’re covering yourself for times when you have problems that are too complicated to fix within the four hours, as I should imagine you’ll always have those.
It will be so worth it if you can do all this. My experiences with IT companies in the past have been awful and I know that the service you’re planning to offer will definitely see you taking customers from your competitors.
Catherine Lawson’s last blog post..Could Earplugs Improve Your Business?
great post, not just about your business, but about life as well.
I we would all listen 2x to the amount we talk, we would all be much further ahead.
Great suggestions
RacerX’s last blog post..Star Wars Economy: The Empire Falls
Hi Catherine, off-topic, but I wanted to comment about your earlier post regarding Neil Patel. I was aware of who he was and had it in my mind to perhaps contact him later in the year regarding a social media marketing campaign. Apparently, he is something of a rising star in this area. I’ve seen pics of him and knew he was young, but I had no idea he was 21. Makes sense, though. Social media like myspace, facebook, and even Digg get most of their visitor traffic from the under-25 crowd. I may have fixed that commenting issue by the way.
Hi RacerX - glad you learned something from it. I hope that lady learned from the conversation about the earplugs as the rest of her service was great. But, as Ian said, sometimes something can be slapping you in your face, when it comes to your own business, and you just don’t see it.
Hi Tim - thanks for fixing the commenting issue. You would no doubt lose commentors if they can only log in under blogger or google.
Yes Neil is becoming something of a phenomenon and he is so young. This is his blog address: http://www.quicksprout.com/
and hopefully you’ll find his contact details there.
Catherine Lawson’s last blog post..Could Earplugs Improve Your Business?
Hello Catherine,
It’s true. If we can offer our customers more than they expect, they are more likely to become repeat customers and refer you to others.
I love your examples…so obvious to the outsider, but often these ideas are not thought of by the businesses.
One thing I hear a lot of is that when I answer the telephone, customers think I am an answering service. They may have called others, only to not get an answer, get an answering machine, or an answering service. They’re extremely pleased to know they are talking to “a real person”., who is a part of the business.
Barbara’s last blog post..Blog Loses Massive Traffic Due To Profanity
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