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 11/6/2006 |
Make it Easy
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Some of my best ideas for our weekly Monday Motivations come from readers, like yourself. I closely watch the things that readers search for, and if I don’t have something that meets their search request, often I’ll put that idea on the list.
Today’s topic, “Make it easy” is one of those. I’m indebted to the reader who searched for it, because it’s a great topic – and I’m going to expand on the original search “Make it easy for the customer” just a bit. I hope you won’t mind.
With all the pushing we do in our lives, it seems like most of the time, we’re trying to do things that are just plain hard – “easy” just doesn’t seem to cut it anymore. We work harder than ever, we exercise harder each day, and our lives seem to be harder than they were 20 years ago. In fact, the only time we ever hear about “easy” today seems to be commercials for Staples, an office supplies retailer, which sells, among other things, an “easy button,” which purports to suggest that everything can be easy when it’s done with Staples.
So why should we be trying to make thing easy?
First and foremost, we should Make it Easy for the customer.
How do we do this?
* We make it easy to find us.
* We make it easy to contact us.
* We make it easy to buy from us.
* We make it easy to like us.
In my life, I’ve dealt with a number of companies who apparently don’t want my business – or at least that’s the way they act. To contact someone at these companies, I’ve got to make it through a seven-level phone tree. I’ve got to read them my account number, twice. I’ve got to explain my question to them. I’ve then got to explain it again, to someone who actually understands English.
Once, I called Sears with a slight problem – I had inadvertently underpaid a $2.99 credit card bill by one cent. They charged me a $20 penalty charge. Now, let me explain myself – I had bought thousands of dollars of merchandise from Sears over the years. I was a pretty good customer. So, I called them on the phone, hoping they would lose the penalty. The woman on the other side said just one sentence: “Our computer’s down,” and then she hung up on me, without waiting for another word.
Did I pay my bill? Yes, I did. I also canceled my Sears credit card. Did I shop at Sears anymore? Are you kidding?
Another time, I went to see a physician. Twice, I waited three hours in the waiting room. I have a different physician now.
I went to a drive-in restaurant. “Pull up to the curb, and we’ll run it right out to you,” said the clerk. Twenty minutes later, I went into the restaurant and had a few words with them. I haven’t been back.
I went to buy a car. The dealership tried a bait-and-switch. I bought the car from somewhere else, and proceeded to warn everybody I knew about the dealer. I think I talked with a good hundred people or more.
I bought some material from an equipment dealer. In order to buy from them, they required I fax my credit card information to their Los Angeles regional office. A person in that office then placed my order, and also used that credit card information to attempt to purchase some porno videos and have them shipped to Vietnam. I had been a fairly good customer from that company – but I never went back. I fed their salesman’s email address to my junk mail filter. I ignored his calls when he called. I tore up his business card. What’s more, I found that one of their competitors was a whole lot easier to work with – and so I worked with them.
These companies, and countless more like them, seem to think the customer doesn’t really matter, no matter how stupid, archaic, or difficult their processes and procedures may be; but in any organization, no matter how big or small, the customer can fire anyone – from the chief executive on down – merely by taking his or her business somewhere else. When companies make it difficult for a customer to do business with them, they are shooting themselves in the foot – or somewhere else.
Contrast this with a national home-improvement chain that I frequent. I cannot wander around the aisles of their building without having people offer to give me help (perhaps I look like I’m lost). I have had plumbing salespeople spend 15 minutes with me, teaching me how to fix something. I have had sales associates walk across the building with me, just to show me where something was located. As a result, I go out of my way to shop at that retailer – because they have made it easy for the customer to like them, find them, and buy from them.
Another company I deal a lot with is Amazon.com. I know when I buy from Amazon, I can move from searching for what I want to finalizing the transaction in under two minutes. What I order always comes on time – always – and in hundreds of purchases I’ve made from Amazon, I have only received two wrong orders, both in the middle of the busy Christmas season, and Amazon had the correct items in my hands the next day.
Do they make it easy for me to buy from them? Apparently – perhaps a bit too easy.
How do we make it easy for the customer?
1. We try to give the customer what he or she is looking for.
2. We try to empower the customer, with technologies that will allow him or her to work the way they want to. For example, I prefer to pay bills online – and I prefer to deal with companies that make that process easy.
3. We make it easy for the customer to contact us – cell phones, email, addresses, as well as important information such as when we’re open, where we’re at, and what we offer. My wife and I are prone to order in dinner from one or two particular restaurants. Why? Because they have their menu on the Web, and they bring your order out to your car. They make it easy for their customers.
We also have to make it easy for the customer to say yes – to buy from our company. How do we do that?
1. We find out what the customer wants, and provide it, to the best of our abilities.
2. We give the customer all pertinent information, so he or she feels comfortable with the decision.
3. We listen to what the customer says, and learn and adapt.
Now, I said I was going to expand on this topic a bit, and that introduces another facet of “making it easy.”
How do we make it easy for ourselves to succeed?
1. We concentrate on high-worth, high impact activities. For example, if we want success, we should actively work toward that success, not spend our time watching infomercials on late-night TV.
2. We enlist the help of others – mentors who have the knowledge we need, loved ones who can act as cheerleaders and motivators, co-workers who can share our ideas and desires.
3. We choose positive, attainable goals, and focus our desires toward attaining those goals.
4. We forgive ourselves for past mistakes, false starts, and missteps, knowing that concentrating on the problems of the past only sets us up for failure in the future.
Now it’s time to “make it easy:” for ourselves to succeed, and for our customers, so they can help us succeed.
Life shouldn’t be so hard.
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