Tag Archives: banking

What's the ROI on gold-plated customer service?

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L.L. Bean boots. By redjar, April 24, 2006, Flickr Today’s article is a reminder that customer service, when done correctly, isn’t an expense.  It can be your #1 marketing tool and put a wide moat between your business and your competitors.

L.L. Bean is the standard against which your phone support should be measured.

From their website:

Guaranteed.  You Have Our WordTM.

Our products are guaranteed to give 100% satisfaction in every way.  Return anything purchased from us at any time if it proves otherwise.  We do not want you to have anything from L.L. Bean that is not completely satisfactory.

Unlike a lot of companies, L.L. Bean really lives by their guarantee.

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Decommoditize your offerings

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My first post of 2008 comes as the result of a fairly normal activity that many of us–if we listen to the financial gurus and our financial advisors–undertake every year.  Namely, double-checking our financial records, investment portfolio allocations, life insurance and so forth.

During this year’s analysis of my bank accounts, I found that a teaser rate from Wachovia bank had expired and the interest rate on one of my money market accounts had gone down from 4.75% to the standard rate of 1.75%.  As the result of a couple of phone calls and some quick online banking, Wachovia lost a large chunk of my business that they needn’t have.

And they could have prevented it all by taking a lesson from Willams-Sonoma.

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