It’s easy to make a promise, but very hard to keep it.
Worse still, if you continue to overpromise, what started out as a small oversight (in your mind), snowballs out of control and results in an avalanche that can cause devastating damage and loss.
But many businesses continue, even in the light of social media’s rampant social conscience role, to continue to fail at the gate.
Their service just doesn’t deliver to their copy or brand promise.
Keeping your business promise is one of the simplest and most powerful ways to ensure your own business success.
Let me share a recent experience of mine.
The other day I was hunting for an agent to sell my mother’s house. I called five agents to see if they could come and give me an appraisal. Two answered the phone. I left messages for the other three. I haven’t heard back from them.
So I experienced only a forty per cent delivery at the first hurdle – to simply answer the phone, or if not, just return my call.
Onto the second hurdle. Luckily both of those I spoke to were prepared to come out within the next 24hours (I had distinct time limitations due to travel commitments).
Both came, delivered their pitch and got a shot at winning me over – to again deliver on their customer service copy promise.
(Customer service is an intrinsic part of every brand promise – whether or not it’s specifically articulated in the copy).
For passing that second hurdle they now had a one-in-two chance of getting the listing – not bad odds for about 15-30 minutes work.
I won’t continue with the rest of the hurdles they needed to pass in the delivery of their brand promise to me, as there are bigger implications in this story. And so many businesses are continuing to overlook their importance in their strategies.
The failure of those three agents to deliver on their promise (with a simple phone call) was one black mark on their scoresheet. But the second (some would say worse) failure was that they missed the opportunity to deliver a ‘customer experience’ to me. (To be exact, a positive one).
Customers today want more than just a product or service. We want an experience.
That experience starts with the delivery of copy and brand promises. It then continues by building trust and rapport so that we will make them part of our community.
As a business, providing that experience doesn’t need to be time consuming, shouldn’t cost financially or require a restructure.
Instead, it needs a conscious effort to make every client and customer – everyone who is touched by your businesses – to feel wanted, needed and special.
It’s a simple thing to fix.
Delivering on your copy promise should be a priority in every business.
Otherwise, the slippery slope flows downward – fast.
The waterfall of broken promises starts with the product.
And unfortunately when your brand makes promises and you don’t keep them, then your staff and subsequent sales bear the brunt.
Photo via stock.xchng user willstein
