Times are tough, but is ‘cheap’ a replacement for delighting customers?

I ordered some leather balm online last week. For the sofa you understand. It’s fantastic stuff, John Lewis sell it for £5 a tube, but I found it online for £10 for a pack of 5. Good, I use that much of it that 5 is no problem. Was a bit miffed at the £7.50 postage charge (more on Ryanair in a minute...), but still cheaper overall than John Lewis. However, when it arrived I opened the box and not only was there the 5 tubes of leather cream, but they had included a tube of leather cleaner, furniture cream and a couple of antiseptic handwash thingies. Brilliant! Didn’t ask for them, arguably don’t need them, but the leather cleaner and furniture cream are probably also worth a few quid. I was dead chuffed because they didn’t have to chuck in the extra stuff, but they did. And now I’ll buy all my leather cream from them in the future. Simple. It got me thinking...

Times are tough for a lot of people and it’s tempting as a business to start thinking along the lines of Tesco and some of the other major retailers. Three coaching sessions for the price of two anyone?! Buy one workshop get one free?!? We know some companies who are running training courses for free! We’ve talked about it, but I actually came to the conclusion that, as a business, we are more like John Lewis than Tesco. We do good quality stuff and are nice to deal with. Some people might find us too expensive, but not for those clients who appreciate quality. Which is why I’ve always resisted ‘special offers’. In our business they might be useful to get a foot in the door, but if people view you as ‘cheap’ then they will always view you as cheap. Is getting three for the price of two really cheap?

And then there’s the other extreme. We booked the flights for our family holiday this week. I’m not going to rant on about Ryanair - search on Hitler rants about Ryanair on youtube for some fun. But NOT if you are easily offended! - but suffice to say we paid the extra £200 to fly Easyjet rather than use Ryanair. Not that Easyjet are significantly better - £30 just to pay by credit card!! It’s not a clever way of doing business, it leaves people feeling ripped off.

The lesson? If you run a business, or are a manager of people, be up front, honest and open. Bad news delivered skillfully is always better received than good news delivered unskillfully. People want to know where they stand, they don’t like ‘hidden charges’ or ‘optional extras’ that aren’t’ really optional. Even better, when times are hard what really delights people is giving them more than they expected. So, give more for less rather than more for more and pretending it is less! When things stabilise they will remember how you treated them.