Capital Business Coaching
How Convenient!
I am standing in line today to get change back for the tank of diesel I just put in my truck. Over my left shoulder I see ~15 choices on baseballs caps, and I think they sure make it easy to buy stuff here. I scan the place, chips, beer, wine, liquor. milk, cheese, yogurt, cereal, OTC meds, oil etc, you get the drill, there is almost anything you might need from a big store in a very convenient to me location.
The first major convenience store chain I remember is 7-11, after the original store hours. Open from 7 in the morning to 11 PM. That was convenient in of it’s self but then you add all the items you could get, like a big Slurpee, some candy bars, sunflower seeds and the list goes on.
A lot has changed over the years in the convenience store model but one thing that has not is delivering what the customers wants or needs in a convenient way.
I asked myself as I stood there just how convenient do I make it for my customers to do business with me? Is it easy or do I have barriers up that slow down or halt the flow of business in my life? Is the welcome mat out or not?
Some ways to make it easy for my customers could be:
- extraordinary customer service
- value
- availability of goods or service
- shipping ease
- hours of business
- being target/niche/vertical/channel specific
- quality
- understanding my customers needs and delivering on them. What do I solve for you- my customer?
- guarantee
- warranty
- under promise over deliver
Some ways to put up blocks to making it convenient could be:
- poor customer service- hate to say it but I have done this more than I care to admit. And the biggest way I have done this is by not really knowing or understanding what my prospect/customer really wanted or needed in the first place. I was not listening from their point of view, but mine which was “get the sale”
- inferior quality
- failure to follow-up
- hours of operation
- lack of selection
- over promise and under deliver
Someone who has set the bar pretty high for Convenience Store Business is Jack Humphrey. He has done so in a number of ways like,
his FR*E ebook Authority Black BookAuthority Black Book
his ning site SocialPowerLinking.com
tons of free information in his blog Friday traffic Report
and here are just some of the great posts you can find there ( hover over the points below and above to get a snippet of the content)
- Free SEO tools
- Internet marketing Software and training
- SEO
- Making your Stumbled Pages Sticky
- Search Engine Land: Small is Beautiful
- How to take immediate action on Reese video #3
- Site of the day Mahalo
- Top Marketing Blogs
- Bad Ass Marketing Blog is Born
- Squiddo lens building tips
- The wisdom of Dosh Dosh
- You social media empire in 10 steps
- Meet a 14 year old who blogs better than you do
- Authority Site Center Case Studies
- How to make money online with and authority site
- Authority site review: copywriting.com
- Authority sire review: cheatingways.com is HOT!
- Building your blogs tribe
- Making your blog popular
- iKarma builds your street cred
- 21 valuable lists from Mashable
- Blog marketing linky links
- Google ignoring your directory listings?
- Content Rich: Writing Your Way to Wealth Online
- Webside Chat with Alana Taylor, Mashable.com, AlanaTaylor.com
- Future Tech: Generate Esoteric Buzz with Barcodes and “ARGs”
- Make Money With Continuity
- Mikogo Gives Desktop Sharing to Everyone
- Web2Submitter, The Web’s Only White Hat Social News Posting Software
- Google Pagerank Explained
- Being Seth Godin
- Top 50 Video Sharing Sites
- How to do a trackback to get more links and traffic
- Easy video embedding trick for YouTube and other video embed codes…
- Most Popular Post Plugin Review
- Technorati Favorite Blogs Exchange
- Directory of article directories - a comprehensive list of places to submit your article!
- Wordpress Plugin Review: KQF
- About Jack Humphrey
- Webside Chats Podcasts
- Forum
- Track Your Social Marketing
That is really convenient if you ask me.
I have added a few more examples of great customer service or how a business makes it convenient for you to do business with them.
Customer Service Tips for Small Business - Get Ahead and Stay … - FACT: 68% of people will quit doing business with companies that have poor customer service. Find out how to give great customer service - get effective customer service tips at …
Apple’s Great Customer Service: the $249 Difference « Dilbert is … - One of the reasons Apple has inspired such devotion among its customers is great customer service. I doubt you love your iPod as much as I love mine. One of the reasons Apple has legions of devotees is their …
Management Articles | Seven Do’s of Customer Service :: Article by … - Your “customer service department” is you and you, alone. So it makes sense that you would want to do whatever you can to improve the service you give to your customers. Here are seven Do’s to keep in mind when it comes to … DO give great customers great deals! While a special discount is a great way to encourage a first-time customer, offering regular deals to your faithful customers will not only make them feel appreciated, it will keep them knocking on your door. …
Customer Service Tutorial: Dealing With Customer Complaints Blast - Adding B.L.A.S.T to your expanding toolbox of customer service tools will help you in dealing with customer complaints and turn them around so they can tell their friends what great service you have! …
Randall Blaum’s Blog: Do Your Customers Know More About Customer … - One way to reduce the chance of your ever losing a customer is to ensure that your managers, assistants, supervisors and front line staff understand the importance of providing great service. Don’t just settle for the IDEA of customer …
Dan Benjamin - Apologize - I think this is the best example of great customer service I’ve seen from a bricks-and-mortar operation in a long time. Going into the situation, I’d had no motivations or motives save one: I’d hoped that they’d hear me, …
The Art of Customer Service - Jay’s posterous - Great customer service companies don’t shoot the messenger. It could be a customer, an employee, a vendor, or a consultant who’s doing the pointing. The goal is not to silence the messenger, but to fix the problem so …
Customer Service in B2B - 15 Ideas That Work [plus Bonus Manifesto … - 15 Ways to Deliver Great Customer Service (in B2B relationships). Turn your customers into raving fans. This should be the goal of every customer relationship you have, regardless of the situation. …
Good customer service vital for brand survival - A great brand defines a compelling vision and set of principles to guide behaviour of all employees. Any company that feels they can approximate a different set of values for their customers than they promote for their employees are really fooling themselves. …. “Unfortunately, many brands in the region focus on basic customer service training to tell their employees to smile and be helpful to the customer but fail to engage them to deliver a true brand experience. …
Tips for delivering great customer service | Call Centre Helper - Paul Clark believes that the essence of delivering great customer service can be distilled into ten key areas. 1. Effective customer intelligence One of the issues we come …
Managing through the recession - Focus on customer service - Fairmont Hotels is a case study of great customer service. I originally started to stay at Fairmont Hotels because of the unique physical plant and location of their Canadian properties (think grand hotels from the golden age of rail …
2009 can be a banner year for your business if you are willing to let Customer Service be a focul point for you and your employees.
Happy Holidays
