People often refer to business friendly states, or business friendly banks, but I think it’s most important to be a business friendly business. Business friendly essentially means customer friendly, but to businesses rather than individuals. Many if not most businesses have companies as customers that use the others products or services as an enabler for their own business. It makes sense to treat these business customers with great service and attention, since they will not be buying just one of your products, but hundreds or thousands, and will be much more valuable than most individual customers.
I was surprised in the last two weeks by companies on opposite ends of the friendly spectrum. Two companies were very business unfriendly. A couple were the opposite – so business friendly they were almost Zappos-like. Tempting as it is, I won’t name the two unfriendly companies. I’ll take the high road and highlight one of the superstars.
First, my top 5 things you should do as a business friendly company – in reverse order:
5) Be prompt and courteous in phone and email communication. Hardly a revelation, but it was shocking to me how a couple companies – in this economy – could afford not to do this.
4) Look for ways to say “yes”. If hitting a roadblock on pricing, terms, or support – think out of the box to figure out a way to make you and your business customer happy.
3) Show respect for their time. Businesses are busy. Not getting back when you said you would, not completing an order on time, requiring your customer to follow up on you - not good business practices.
2) Be proactive. Be the first one to reach out, show you care, put in that little extra effort.
1) Think of your mom. Ask yourself, what would I be doing differently if this customer was my Mom? Would I be going out of my way a little more? Would I be a little nicer? Would I try within my own organization to knock down a few hurdles? If we all treated everyone like we treat our Mom, the world would surely be a better place.
Now for my superstar highlight. Drum roll…
FedEx Office. Although they ditched their “Kinkos” name last year, it’s hard for me not to call them FedEx Kinkos. If you are like me, you might expect poor service from a really large company, but I was floored by the exceptional business friendly service I received recently from FedEx Office. They were able to produce a yard sign for me and ship it for free to a local FedEx location across the country all within 24 hours. Other companies that specialize in yard signs had 1-2 week lead times for producing the sign, added another 1-4 days for shipping, were much more expensive, and of course charged for shipping. 24 hour turnaround was out of the question. But for FedEx Office, it was no problem.
Not only that, they did all of those top 5 business friendly things. Kudos to Kinkos!
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