How fast do you return a telephone call or an email from a potential lead?
I ask myself this every time a lead remarks to me, how quickly I responded. I wonder if perhaps most businesses do NOT return contacts as fast as they could. I try to respond the moment I get a contact. Even if I am busy, I at least try to respond and inform them that I will return their call when I have time enough to respond properly.
Yesterday I left a message with a store, asking them to give me their store hours. The message said that they would get back to me. It’s been more than 24 hours and nothing. How many businesses do this – make a promise and then fail to act on it. What is the message their brand is saying to me? I believe it’s telling me that I am not important to them. Maybe the next time they complain about how slow business is they could also talk about how they failed to get back to leads who called to inquire about something and they chose to ignore them. Nobody is going to beg your brand to do business with them.
Most small businesses that I speak with, have service as one of their brand values. When a business leaves their customers on hold for extended periods of time, or they fail to return their calls and inquiries, then service is not something that their company takes very seriously. Service when it suits them would be more appropriate. Your simply can’t compromise your brand values if you hope to grow your business based on consistent delivery of quality. The marketplace thrives on authenticity in their brands. Paying lip service looks good on the surface, but when your offer is tested in the marketplace, you will be quickly found out, and your market share will diminish.
A great example of this in today’s marketplace is Toyota. After spending years bragging about their quality, they got greedy and failed to live up to their brand value regarding quality. Now their brand is suffering in the marketplace with lower sales and a renewed confidence in American models. Their arrogance cost them huge, and it will take years to regain their polish. Now I’ll bet those short cuts on quality, don’t look like such a great idea in their boardrooms anymore. They grew so comfortable with their quality reputation that they obviously felt that the brand would carry the day no matter if it were authentic or not.
Don’t make this mistake. Brand Values are essential to your growth and prosperity.
Great tips. I am trying to build my new business and I hope your tips will help me out!
Thanks
Stay true to your values KC and they will benefit you. They are your foundation.
Thanks for commenting.
Well for me the Customer feedback is the most important. I never compromise customers with any other factor because for building brand marketing is most important and if its done by customers then our half work is done at the same time. Fast delivery, individual replies, instant reply, bearing lost sometimes are some of the aspects to work on.
Stay true to your values KC and they will benefit you. They are your foundation.
Thanks for commenting.
I’m with your attitude Jennifer. I try my best to reply and deliver as efficiently as i can. People just want to get on with things and it does neither of us any good to hold up that process with sloppy service.
Brand values can help you build your connections to your customers. The values you instilled is your edge towards good relationship with them. Just stick to it and everything will went well for sure.
That’s the challenge eh Greg – sticking to it. Easy when times are good, but a challenge when income is slow coming. That is the true test for any entrepreneur.
Brand values can really strengthen your business that may eventually result to a much better business flow. However, it isn’t that really easy to deal with maintaining your business brand values cause there might be other problems that you really need to undergo before achieving success with this one.
Ethan i would suggest that there is no real effort in maintaining values, but rather it should be natural in the way you conduct business. Problems looking for a solution use values as the way of handling the situation. Your values give you the guidance you need.
You must have a good serviese if you want have a well business
Without truly great services, where are we? With the web, a person can get their product anywhere, but great service is something to be embraced.
I think that if you are honest and treat your customers as they were you friends then you will not go far wrong
Brand value plays an important role, As you said. But more importantly giving good services is another fact that increases the business value.
That Vernon, is another way of saying you have to build a trusting relationship which is a hallmark of branding. Thank you for your insight.