The most important thing is to focus on the entire customer experience from the time they learned about who you are until after they leave and are using the products. You have to step back from it and look at the big picture of this experience.
Don’t stop at the time they pick up the order, either. For example, if you sell shirts for a 5K race, is it easy for the volunteers to hand out those shirts or do they have to deal with a printer’s fold? Are you making memorial products, and if so, are you making sure that everything is assembled and ready to give directly to the grieving?
Then, take a good, hard look at your marketing from the beginning to the end. Does the look of your marketing match the look and feel of the follow-up email, or any other transaction email, your customer gets? Think of the things like proof approvals and tracking numbers you send out. Ask yourself, did you give the customer opportunities along the way to build a relationship with your business? Things like encouraging social media sharing, offering tours of your facility, or even making sure your customers have an account representative they can contact all build that relationship.
If you have done all those things – put yourself in your customers’ shoes and are confident that you and your entire staff really care about your customers – then the next time a potential customer says they can get it up the road cheaper, offer to drive them there!
-Aaron Montgomery, MontCo Consulting, 2 Regular Guys
