Improvise for Your Customers to Increase Profits

If you are trying to make money from selling products or services to customers, then you need to keep those customers happy. A first sale is easily, making people return is a lot harder.

The idea for this post comes from an experience I had whilst ordering a drink in a pub, it was by no means a bad experience, but it did make me think about business and customer relations

The Back-story

A simple story, but one which will set the scene for this post.

I went into a pub to have a meal with my cousin the other weekend and before we sat down to east, we decided to order a drink. I ordered a pint of coke, but was turned down because they didn’t service pints of coke. Obviously I just got the size of coke that they did do instead, but surely it wouldn’t have been hard to simply give me a pint of coke and charge me twice maybe, as it’s like a double drink? This would have made my experience much better, because my demands would have been met. As well as this, the pub itself would have made more money off me, increasing their profits.

This is obviously a bit of a weird point to be made, as it seems so insignificant, but I think it helps se this article up for the overall picture.

Pleasing Your Customers

To build a business with a good brand image and reputation, you need to please your customers, even on the little things. To further help your brand image, give customers what they want and make sure that they know you have made an extra effort to help them, everyone likes to feel special and showing them you went the extra distance will help a lot. If I was told by the pub “Oh, sorry, we don’t actually do pints of coke, but ill see what I can do”, I would have been grateful and rate the pub much more highly.

Pleasing a customer is simple, if you make it simple.

Problems Which Could Arise

I think it needs to be said that many times people offer what they are prepared to and nothing else because it is very hard to price something which isn’t prepared for. For example, if you went into a restaurant and ordered something which wasn’t on the menu then it may be hard for the establishment to accept as they wouldn’t be aware on the costs for that meal, and therefore wouldn’t know if it would be worthwhile. In my situation this wouldn’t really be the case, a glass of coke is a glass of coke, but as we get into more complicated lines of business, this really does become a problem. On the other hand, when we do get into more complicated lines of business, it may be easier to meet customer’s demands, as there will be more room to make these changes. Cases I’m referring to could be builders, car salerooms etc.

Customers Are Your Most Important Assets

Remember, customers are the people who are making your business stay alive and hopefully making profit, therefore they are your lifeline. To expand your business you need to expand your customer base, whether that be making regular customer or bringing more in. Either way, you need the correct brand image to get them back, if someone likes your company, they will come back and tell their friends, earning you more money and expanding your business. To make them come back, try and give the customer what they want, even if that means going out of your way.

Image: Shiny Happy People by Donna Cymek