30 Jun 09 Training Your Customers to Be Loyal
My wife and I brought home a new computer desk chair from Staples the other day, and like a good husband I offered to assemble it for her. The instructions that came with the chair were so elegant, so clear, and so well-organized that I realize that Staples is one of the leaders in customer service today. They two areas I have found that they excel in are rife with customer abuse stories: the aforementioned assembly instructions, and rebate offers.
Product Assembly Instructions that Don’t Inspire Fear and Dread
We’ve all had assembly horror stories, whether it’s on Christmas Eve or when putting together new office furniture. Maybe the parts don’t match the list, or the diagrams aren’t all that clear. Sometimes they’re written in five or six languages, but the translation into yours leaves something to be desired. I’m especially wary of the ones that include a number to call for free replacement parts; experience has shown me that this means that the parts are cheap to manufacture and likely to break again. All in all, writing product assembly instructions is not given the attention that it deserves.
Putting together this Staples chair, however, was a very different experience. The instructions were a series of drawings that were very clear, and the parts were all labeled visibly. The hardware was individually wrapped, and labeled with the number of the step it would be used for. Even the spare parts were clearly labeled as such. The entire assembly took me less time than it usually takes just to inventory the parts.
Rebates Done Simply
I’ve just about given up on buying things that have rebate offers, because the instructions for getting the money back are usually incredibly complicated and filled with loopholes designed to prevent me from ever seeing the money. Not so at Staples, where the company’s own in-house rebate program can be completed online with the information printed on the receipt itself. The novelty of actually getting the money back never wears off.
Lessons from Staples’ Customer Service
Staples invests time and money into ensuring that customers don’t get frustrated after they’ve already spent their money. No business can afford to stop giving quality service after money has changed hands, because a returning customer is worth so much more than a one-shot. Not only are are customers already educated about your unique market position (right?), they are also the ones that are most likely to refer others to your door.
What client after-care can you be doing that will increase your customer retention?
Tags: customer service, Guest Post, Terence P Ward