Lawn & Landscape:
Here are some inexpensive ideas about how to manage the powerful basics of your brand:
1. Do what you say you are going to do. Positive experiences cause customers to tell their friends. Don’t miss deadlines and always try to “underpromise and overdeliver” on quality and features, not the other way around.
2. Surprise people. Don’t forget that negative experiences spread much faster than positive ones and are harder to overcome - if you get a chance at all. I’ll never forget the credit card company that put a $50 credit on my account to make up for what was really a minor administrative error. I was surprised and pleased, and my negative impression was promptly replaced by a positive one.
3. I’m not suggesting you try to buy off every disgruntled customer. But if you have one who is valuable to you, and you know you were in the wrong, do something meaningful and surprising with a big smile on your face. The investment will be returned to you many times over, and you will have cut off a potentially negative story about you.
4. Another example happened to me right after I had submitted this column for publication, but I found the experience so relevant that I revised the column to include this story. I had recently bought a used pickup truck at a local used vehicle dealer, and although the 30-day warranty had passed I took it there to get some help, which I planned to pay for. The passenger side window would go up only with the driver side control; it did not respond to the passenger side control. A young man from the service department said he could fix it right in the driveway by taking a relay out of another truck, and then he would order a replacement for that one.
He said it would not take long. I must not have been watching him carefully, because after just a few minutes I noticed he was not around. Thinking he could not possibly have fixed it already, I went into the service bays and found him. He had indeed finished it, and when I asked him how much I owed, he said, “nothing,” because I had bought it there recently.
The whole thing took less than 10 minutes and cost me nothing. I had considered going to the service department at the new-car dealership, thinking they would be the only ones with the part and that I was out of warranty anyway. How long do you think I would have waited and how much do you think I would have been charged?
Where do you think my first stop will be the next time I’m thinking about anything automotive?
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