Delivery as a service opportunity: In the past, distributors could choose from just two delivery options. Either you could bring the product to the customer, or the customer could pick it up from you. Fortunately, you’re no longer limited to that model today.
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Give Your Customers Options
When you approach delivery today, consider a variety of information. How will your company distinguish itself? What delivery options can you offer that others do not or will not? Ultimately, how will you meet your customers’ expectations in ways that your competitors do not?
When differentiating yourself based on delivery, do so in ways that your customers need and want. In fact delivery can actually be a service opportunity.
Find out What They Want and Give it To Them
The best way to discover new options to offer or opportunities to stand out from your competition is to talk to your customers – more than your competitors do. Communication with all customers is important and can provide an invaluable feedback loop for your company.
By providing the options your most important customers need and want, you serve those customers better than any competitor, giving those customers clear and unmistakable reasons to do business with you.
Communication is Key
Communication is how you learn what systems to put in place for your customers. Ask them what they want. Is it important to have a variety of options for delivery, or is it always and only going to be one way?
One danger of offering a variety of prices is that a customer may reflexively choose the lowest price even if that lowest price isn’t the best fit. By communicating with your customer, it is possible to set price points that satisfy them and meet your costs.
This level of communication provides an opportunity to uncover the service innovations in your industry that will keep you ahead of your competition.
By providing the delivery options that your customers need and want, you set yourself up to provide service to those customers better than any competitor. By communicating frequently with your customers, you’ll know what delivery options they want the most.
It goes beyond just delivery as a service opportunity: When you talk to your customers more frequently than your competition, you have the opportunity to learn about and meet all of their needs more effectively.
Dr. Jeanne Hurlbert, President of Hurlbert Consulting, brings to her role as STAFDA’s endorsed customer service consultancy expertise in sociology and survey research. After spending more than 25 years in academia, she now uses her extensive behavioral science expertise to help companies like yours distinguish yourselves through customer service. What sets her approach to customer service apart is that she begins by helping companies meld research and marketing to find out exactly (a) what their customers want and (b) how well they’re succeeding in giving customers what they want. Jeanne provides STAFDA members with 30 minutes of complimentary consulting per year; please identify yourself as a STAFDA member when you contact her. You can schedule a consult with her by going to www.ConciergeCustomerService.com or you can call her at 888-590-9677. And, if you’d like to complete her complimentary assessment, just go to www.FixYourService.com.
