We all experience good and bad service. It’s a fact of life that whenever you deal with people you are going to either like the experience or not. When you’re a business person you want to provide your customers with good, if not excellent customer service… don’t you? This is where things get interesting because I quite often hear my clients say that they can’t afford to have customer service reps spend a lot of time on the phone with a client or prospect. Sometimes I hear that they can’t afford to train their people to do things better.
My response? How long can you afford to lose business? Because you know that poor service drives customers away and it sure doesn’t create repeat business!
Imagine that you’re starting up a new service-focused business. It could be anything from a hair salon to pizza shop to an on-line travel agency. How you interact with your customers, how your physical space is laid out and decorated all work to inform your customer service experience. There’s a pizza shop near-by that does good advertising. They have a personality that they’ve created and they “sell” it in all their outbound communications.
So far so good.
When you go to their shop they have outdoor seating with umbrellas. It’s very nice but there is no inside seating. So in poor weather or during the winter months they’re strictly a take-out or delivery operation. That’s fine as long as their customer service is good right? Well this is where things start going a little sideways. Inside, the shop looks like a factory floor. There’s metal shelving and industrial ovens and of course pizza boxes in the business part of the floor space. The counter is a narrow shelf of a thing with a ton of P.O.P. displays and there’s no where to sit while you wait for your order. Good customer service? Hmmm.
So how’s your customer service? Do you make your customers feel like royalty who can’t wait to come back and do business with you again? Or do you make them uncomfortable and leave them wondering why they ever called your business in the first place.
A logo, also called an ideogram, is a graphic symbol that represents an idea or a concept. Today’s logos can be purely graphical symbols or include the name of the organization. In this latter case they’re considered a logotype or wordmark. Having a good, functional logo is important because it represents you and/or your company when none of your other branding materials or messages are present. Imagine that you sponsor a local little league team. They allow you to place your company logo on the shirts the children wear, no slogans or tag lines, just the logo. Would the people in the stands be intrigued enough to find out about your company based on your logo and your community involvement?
Good logo design is difficult as there are a lot of considerations that play into the creation of a successful, lasting logo. There’s graphic design of course, psychology, sociology, and even current events and trends of which you need to be aware.
Why did I mention current events and trends? Because if you’re creating a logo, one that is to last throughout the ages, you don’t necessarily want to create one that looks “trendy” today. Because as that design or style trend wears out or fades (and they all do eventually) you run the risk of having your company’s image become dated and frozen in time. Your image is everything. It’s the first thing the general public and prospects see – you have to make sure that it says the right thing about your business.
Like all things about your business, spend time on the design of your logo. Unless you’re a graphic designer, hire someone to help you create your logo and the rest of your “image.” It’ll be some of the best money you ever spend relative to your business.
When you ship a product to a customer or when you hand a purchase to a customer how do you do it? Is the bag just shoved in the direction of the customer? Do you put shipped items in old recycled boxes?
How you handle the final steps of a transaction with your customers is vitally important in getting them to do repeat business with you. Consider two retail scenarios; the first is where a customer makes a purchase, the item or items are shoved in a bag and slide across a counter in the general direction of the customer. After payment is made the customer takes their bag and leaves. Maybe they come back, maybe not. In the second scenario imagine the items being handled carefully by the person handling the sale. They’re smiling and paying attention to the customer, commenting on their selections, respecting their new property. Each item is gingerly placed in your store bag and if appropriate, each item is wrapped in tissue paper to enhance the feeling of “specialness.” When all the items are packaged and paid for the bag is carefully handed to the customer who is thanked, wished a good day, and told that “we look forward to seeing you soon.”
You don’t have to be Nordstroms to treat your customers to a great experience.
Now look at your shipping practices. What does your box look like? How do you package the items your customer’s purchase? Do you insert a thank you note? All these little things add up to create an experience that creates repeat customers and causes them to tell their friends about you. You’re always selling and the end of each sale is the beginning of your next, so make sure that you aren’t giving your customers a reason to do business with your competition.
As time goes by it seems like everything is on the Internet. If you sell a product, your spec sheet is on the web. If your in the service business, you describe what you do on the web. In many cases a business exists completely on the web with virtually no physical location or store-front. However print, contrary to this popular trend, isn’t dead. In fact in many ways print is having a resurgence, a renaissance if you will.
Today we have on-demand printing, variable data printing, and incredibly high-quality printing that we can do right in our own offices! Your presence on paper is very important because people do appreciate the tangibility of printed materials. How you create your print pieces is very important. Don’t shortcut the message and planning that goes into successful print pieces – you don’t in any other area of your business do you?
So here’s our cheat sheet for creating great print pieces:
- Sit down an plan what you want the piece to do. “Strategize”
- Write the copy that will appear on the piece. Do a first draft, then revise, rewrite, and revise again until it’s perfect.
- Decide what images will appear on your piece. Company logos, product photos, illustrations, all of them need to be at print resolution.
- Next think about what paper you will be using. Is there texture? How thick should it be? These are important believe me.
- Now for the hard part, I mean the fun begins… Design. This is where you build the print piece to fulfill its purpose.
- Evaluate the design. Ask a friend, then ask a customer. If it isn’t doing its job, revise it or hire a professional designer.
- Print! Send your electronic files to the printer and once they’re done, get to work making money!!
A well designed piece using terrific paper shouts to the world that your company, your products and services are top notch. And isn’t that what you want?
“It’s not how you feel, it’s how you look… and you look Marvellous!” Billy Crystal
Now, don’t get me wrong… when you’re in business your products and services do matter. If you’re not selling something of value then “how you look” really doesn’t matter because all your really doing is gilding a sow’s ear.
So let’s start with fact that your product and service is good… even great. How do you present yourself to the world? What does your logo look like? Your stationary? How about your print materials and internet presence? These are the things that make up your presentation, your image to the world. These are the things that people (customers and prospects) see sometimes for the very first time when they find out about you and your business. You don’t want to make a bad first impression.. or second or third. Your business’ public image informs people. It communicates in both obvious and subtle ways that affect their decision to do business with you. You don’t hand out business cards that are dirty and crumbled do you?
Take a survey of your business communications. Give them all an honest, critical eye and determine if they all work together to promote your business in the best way possible. If they don’t, it’s time to replace them.
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