When it comes to advertising one thing is for sure, the money you spend to promote your products or services should have a lasting impression on the potential customer that sees your advertising. Whether you sell products or offer a service for hire, your advertising should convey different things to get an emotional charge out of someone to pick up that phone and place an order or hire your service. Your advertising needs to come across that you, your business (or what you are offering) are reliable. In a service industry this is handled very easily. If you have an appointment scheduled for a certain time, make sure you are there at least 5 minutes earlier than planned. This lets the customer know that you are true to your word. If you say you are coming at 10:00am, you will be there by 10:00am. If you offer a service where you can not give an exact time as to when you will be there, as in home repair and installation services, then give your customer a window in which they can expect you to arrive. I can not think of anything more aggravating then needing a service call and I get a window of 8:00am to 6:00pm. This type of window tells me, one, I have to take an entire day away from my family or my office and two, they are not organized enough to narrow that window down. Do you really want to do business with a company that is not organized? Could you imagine the help you would receive, if you ever had a problem with their product or service? Your window that you should allow, should be no longer than 2 hours. It would be even better if you can make it an hour. About a year ago, my home needed some plumbing work with the hot water heater. So, of course, I called in a plumber. Fearful I would get one of those long range windows, I reluctantly asked the plumber what time they would be there. Surprisingly, the plumber responded with, "How far are you from your home to work?" Lucky for me I am just a few miles. He said he would call my work number when he was within 5 minutes of my house so he could meet me there. This way I did not have to be out of the office all day. Now that is reliable customer service. True to his word, he called late in the day, I left the office to meet him and the problem was resolved without losing an entire day. If your business is selling products, there is a two fold process of reliability here. First the customer wants a reliable product. In other words, not only should it work for a long period of time, but it also needs to do what you say it will do. I am sure you have seen those late night infomercials of gadgets and gizmo's promising they can solve every problem in the world. I can not tell you how many people I know and have met that have bought some of those products, and they turned out to be complete garbage. In other words they are unreliable products. That experience from those customers will have a damaging affect on the company that sells those products. When you have an under performing product, bad publicity and negative word of mouth advertising, spread like wildfire. One way of counter acting this would be to offer full refunds, exchange the product for a new one or give a store credit. It gives the customer an immediate, emotional answer to their problem. Also keep in mind, the customer is going to be angry. You need to keep a smile on your face, be very apologetic and sympathetic to their concerns. It is not so much the free replacement they are looking for. The customer wants to know that you just aren't going to sweep them under the rug after you make a sale. The second part of product reliability, which we touched on a bit already, is the reliability of the business or person that is selling the product. Are you available for the customer to talk to? Are you avoiding the customer? Are you meeting their emotional needs? First listen to what they are telling you before you respond. Letting the customer talk will allow them to get everything off of their chest, then you can respond with the answer they are looking for. Reliability is a key component when it comes to advertising, promoting and handling your business. The more reliable a customer knows you are, the greater the chance they will return as a repeat customer and send their friends and relatives over as well. By: Bruce A. Tucker
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