Is your business easy for your customers? Some of you will say Yes first and then worry about it. Some will immediately begin arguing “All things worth having are worth working for…” The truth is whether you are a B2B, B2C or B2G, your product/service needs to be easy.
Staples has had success with their Easy Button campaign. They have a simple message: press the Easy Button, and all your office supply/ink/printing needs are met. Why is this effective? Because Staples is saying they understand you have bigger things to worry about– and whether your customers are business owners, Congressmen, housewives, schoolteachers or anything else, they have bigger things to worry about than your business.
At work recently I have begun ordering lunch a few times a week. I found a favorite place to order, Restaurant X. They have delicious food, reasonable prices and are only a couple blocks from my office. The first time they delivered right on time, but even after I had ordered a couple of times their [new] delivery people kept getting lost. A couple of times by the time my food arrived it was cold and I had lost whatever brief slip of time I’d been able to carve out for lunch in the first place. Then one day I called and they told me they couldn’t deliver during the lunch rush. Wait… couldn’t deliver lunch? Besides the fact that their website and menus’ largest text proclaims WE DELIVER, they are a downtown eatery within blocks of large office buildings, including mine, and they couldn’t deliver lunch. (On an earlier occasion, too, a coworker had wanted to order with me and Restaurant X told me they “couldn’t split orders”. Since neither she nor I had cash to reimburse one another, she cancelled her order.)
That coworker happened to think of Restaurant Y, a place with similar food a few miles away in a more residential area. Their prices are a little higher (a dollar or two per dish), but I decided to give them a try. They happily delivered, on time, and never got lost. Soon several other people in the office were ordering when I did because they’d seen my food (starting from when I was ordering from Restaurant X), and the drivers come out one time to deliver multiple orders. They patiently take an order and get transferred from phone to phone taking multiple credit cards.
You know what? I like Restaurant X’s food a little bit better, and would appreciate spending a few dollars less on lunch. But on those days I haven’t had time to pack anything and don’t have time to go out, only one thing matters: who can bring me lunch? I need to press the easy button and have lunch appear.
How could your business make it easier for your customers? How are you doing it already?