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Carefully Plan Your Customer Service So It Doesn’t Backfire

Is the special treatment you designed specifically to keep customers coming back working against you?

Be careful what you promise. A local jeweler offers free lifetime battery replacement for any watch he sells. It’s a good hook to keep customers walking back in the store on a regular basis and increases his sales volume. But, it’s backfired on him.

And he’s lost at least one customer because of it. He’s run into a problem getting the batteries he needs and now has to send a customer’s watch off to the manufacturer which lengthens the turn around time for the repair.

One customer got so irate she’s sworn she’ll never do business with him again. Oops. Thousands of dollars of business lost over a $6 battery.

What are the perks you provide for your customers? Does it make their life simpler, save them money or time? Or has it turned into a problem that’s driving them away? Please leave a comment.

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Comments

  1. Neptune Plumbing says:
    December 22, 2009 at 3:08 pm

    This is an interesting article. Until now, I never really thought about how a value-added service can backfire on you like this. We offer our repeat/VIP customers preferential scheduling, discounts on service, etc. These “perks” may have to be reassessed to make sure we don’t have a similar situation as the one in your post. Thanks for sharing.

    Reply

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