Return Customer turns 4 years old this week! I appreciate you, faithful readers, for supporting me and making this another wonderful year.

I always find it interesting to review the data on how people find their way to this site.

Top 5 Most Read Posts

These posts were the most visted this past year:

1. 10 Tricks Customers Hate and 10 Treats They Love
2. Proactive Customer Service
3. Four Customer Expectations
4. 5 Ways to Better Treat Your Customers
5. Show Empathy to Customers

Top 5 Referrers

These great sites have sent the most people to Return Customer than any other non-search site over the past year:

1. 9rules – I’m a member of 9rules’ business community
2. Aweber blog – valuable information for any online marketer
3. Smiley Cat – Return Customer is featured in the Typography for Headlines gallery
4. Donor Power Blog – Jeff Brooks’ great non-profit blog
5. Marketing Profs Daily Fix – get your daily fill of marketing tips and news

Top 5 Searches

The following searches (linked to their respective posts) brought the most people to this site last year:

1. proactive customer service
2. customer expectations
3. return customers
4. how to treat customers
5. huggies customer service

If you have any comments on things you like or that could be improved with Return Customer, please leave a comment, send me an email, or follow me on Twitter.

I look forward to a big 5 year celebration next year!

If you sell a product that can be purchased almost anywhere from multiple vendors, you’re selling a commodity. This creates some problems in that you must convince customers to buy from you and not someone else.

Since your product itself is ubiquitous, you may be tempted to compete on price. Selling a commodity based on price is a losing proposition. Someone will always be able to undercut you.

So go ahead and sell the product at a fair price.

But wait, that can’t be it. Can it?

You’re right.

You’ll need to give the customer non-price based and compelling reasons to buy from you.

I recently purchased a new laptop from Costco. I could just have easily purchased this product from multiple other websites or retail stores.

In researching the product and reading reviews, people loved the computer but occasionally were frustrated by the return process if they had received a product dead on arrival. Instead of sending the laptop back to the vendor, they had to work with the manufacturer to ship it back and fix it.

I turned to Costco not for price, but because they alleviated the pain of buying this commoditized product. Costco offered a 90-day return policy compared to other vendor’s shorter 15- to 30-day policies. Costco also let me return the product to their store if needed so I wouldn’t have to deal with the hassle of the manufacturer’s return process.

So while the product was a commodity and could be purchased anywhere, the service and policies of Costco turned me in their favor.

In fact, I told my wife when I purchased the laptop that there was no risk because I could always return it, hassle free.

You want your customers to chose you because you are “risk free” and the easiest to purchase from.

Perception is reality.

How many times have you heard that?

Well, guess what? You can change perceptions.

How?

Set proper expectations.

The last time we had a DiGiorno pizza with the family, I noticed this line in the instructions:

Let stand 5 minutes before enjoying

Notice how they didn’t say “before eating” or “consuming” or even “before serving”. They said “before enjoying.”

They stated as obvious, accepted, and unavoidable that you’ll enjoy the product. The natural next step after preparing and cooking the pizza is not just to eat it but rather to enjoy it.

That simple instruction on the box sets expectations in the customer’s mind that they will enjoy the product. It builds excitement while they wait for the pizza to finish cooking.

How do you think you can precondition your customers to be happy with your product or service? Step outside the normal bland copywriting on your product and predict a super customer experience. Just be sure your product lives up to expectations!

One of the 7 deadly wastes is that of rework or over-processing. You may want to look at processes in your company to see if rework waste is hampering your efficiency.

However, be sure you analyze not just your internal steps but also those imposed on your customers.

On a recent trip to my bank’s ATM I had to deposit some checks. I had pre-made my deposit envelope for both my business and personal deposits.

As I started using the ATM, I noticed they had changed their machine. They no longer wanted deposit envelopes. They wanted me to submit my checks one-by-one into the machine.

The ATM then scanned the check, read the amount, and processed the deposit. This is a great gain for tellers. No longer would a bank employee have to open the envelope and manually process the checks. Surely this reduces errors and frees up the tellers for other work.

However, this causes a serious crunch on customer throughput.

It took me four times my normal transaction time to make my deposits. During this time, the line of cars behind me steadily grew.

The bank’s efficiency gain came by shifting the burden to the customer.

When you change your process, think about how it will change customer behavior. Just because you are more efficient doesn’t mean that your customers will be.

If one customer is less efficient because of your change, odds are others’ experience will also be adversely impacted.

We got a very sneaky direct mail postcard the other day. It was from a services company we had used for some plumbing a few years ago.

The postcard read:

Your home may be due for its annual plumbing inspection and water heater clean and check as recommended by the consumer product safety commission and your manufacturer.

Your home’s $30 credit can be used for any plumbing, heating, air conditioning, electrical or appliance service or repair.

The postcard said we had a credit with them that would expire on an approaching date.

A “credit” implies we overpaid in the past or were overcharged and that we have some money due back to us.

The truth is we don’t have a credit with the company. The truth is that this is just a gimmick to get us to use the credit towards a more expensive work order.

Tricking customers is never a good long-term strategy.

A better strategy here would have been to continue down the path of their first paragraph: educate the customer. Perhaps, “We’ll inspect your air conditioning system for free. If we find a problem, we’ll show you what it is, explain your options, and give you our price. If you choose us to service your A/C, that would be great. If not, that is OK too.”

Be completely transparent and honest. The hardest part is getting the customer to invite you to their home. Once you are there, you can educate some more, give them options for repairs, and will probably close the sale.