Customer Obsessed companies keep the promises they make to their customers…its part of their culture and DNA. But what happens when they don’t keep their promises? It can cost them a lot more than money and can often times be hard to repair. It always leaves a stain.
A few weeks ago I ordered a product called “Immunity Drops” from Amazon for my wife…she loves these and swears that they keep her healthier in the “cold and flu” season. They were easy to order. I am an Amazon Prime member so it only takes a couple clicks and in 2-days they arrive…easy. I place the order on Monday and the order page told me they would be delivered Wednesday…perfect tmiing since she just ran out.
However, Wednesday comes and goes and no Immunity Drops. What??? Amazon “promised” me they would be here on Wednesday and now they aren’t. They didn’t keep their promise. I wasn’t very happy and my wife definitely wasn’t happy. They made me a promise when I ordered them and now they didn’t keep it. That’s the problem with a promise, once it’s made we don’t worry about it because we know (or hope) it will be kept. And when they aren’t, its much worse than if you hadn’t made one at all…you’ve broken a promise. Amazon broke their promise.
As expected, I contacted Amazon customer service to figure out what happened and to hopefully resolve the issue. When I asked them where they were (expecting them to say they would be here any time) they told me they would be arriving next Tuesday, almost a week later! What??? I explained when I ordered them on Monday they promised me they would be here on Wednesday and now they are telling me they are a week late. They lied…no other way to say it. They made a promise on their order page and didn’t keep it.
I explained that my wife really needed them now so I asked if they can expedite the order and get them to me tomorrow. They can’t. I asked if they could send me out a new one since the site says it offers 1-day delivery. They are happy to do that for me and pay for the expedited order…only one problem. When I clicked on the 1-day delivery option, the delivery date wasn’t tomorrow…it was next Tuesday…the same day my original order was going to arrive. What???
I was now totally confused…they “promise” me 1 or 2 day delivery and I am getting either 4 -8 day delivery…this isn’t keeping their promise. Their response is to reimburse me for 1 of the 2 products I ordered…not expedite the order. I explained I didn’t need the discount, I needed the product. They had no option but to give me a discount and call it good.
They ended up giving away money AND they still couldn’t keep their promise so they went down a few notches in my mind as being an awesome customer obsessed company. I have always looked at Amazon as a customer obsessed company who finds ways to make my experience better and better when I shop with them. They let me down on this one…and offered no real solution other than to throw money at it.
Think about this example in light of TRUST. Trust is built when you make AND keep your promises…simple. Yet incredibly difficult for many companies to execute. For the sake of example, let’s say I ordered 5 more products from Amazon and 3 out of the 5 had the same issue…promising me a date they couldn’t deliver on. Would I trust them more or less than I do today? Easy…of course it would be less. If they did this over time, I would essentially have no trust for what they said regarding their shipping schedule because they demonstrated to me that they simply couldn’t keep their promises.
Promises are powerful things…we expect people to keep them once they make them. When they don’t, their trust meter goes down a notch. When you continually fall short on delivering your promises, you continually erode the trust your customer have in you…until at some point it’s gone.
Here’s the real kicker…most companies have no idea what the promises their employees are making on a daily basis…until it’s too late and the customer leaves. When this happens, your only hope in saving the customer is to try and give them a variety of concessions to win them back. That costs you money, if it even works at all. If you don’t give them concessions or they have had enough of your empty promises, they simply leave. Sometimes you end up giving concessions and since they still don’t trust you they leave anyway…losing on both ends…money and the customer.
This is pure bottom line profit to a company. You just gave away your entire profit margin on the product plus you lost the cost of time it took to deal with this issue. This is a lose-lose for any company.
NOT KEEPING PROMISES IS EXPENSIVE!!
To close out the story with Amazon, they ended up giving me back the entire cost of both my products and still didn’t expedite the shipping date. It cost them the product margin, the employees’ time to deal with me on the issue, and they lost some trust with me as a customer. Even though this wasn’t a huge order (around $50), multiply it by thousands and you are now talking about some significant profit they are giving away on a single product. It’s a promise not being kept that most likely isn’t going to get discussed or fixed.
But there’s the biggest kicker of all when you don’t keep your promises…I LEAVE. I leave because I can’t trust what they tell me and I can’t count on them to do what they say they will do. Before the turn of this century there weren’t as many options so disgruntled customers had to stick around and put up with companies not keeping their promise. No longer…there are tons of options for everything today thanks to the Internet. I can get this particular product I ordered from at least another 20 other places than Amazon…and they all said they would deliver it when they said. I would be happy to pay a few dollars more for them to keep their promises and get it to me when they say they will. So will your customers!!
As a business owner, ask yourself, “Are we keeping the promises we are making? Do we even know what they are?” These two questions should scare the living daylights out of any business leader/owner. If you don’t know, then the answer is invariably a YES. And if it’s a YES, then your only question is how much profit are we throwing away and how can you identify the areas where we are making promises we aren’t keeping so you can stop it?
When you know the answers to these questions and can be at a point where your customers know you will keep the promises you make, you will be more profitable and your customer loyalty will increase. And the customers will be so happy that they will tell others…they will become your ADVOCATES in the market and proactively tell others about you. This too is pure profit since it didn’t cost you anything to acquire this new customer…your current customers did it for you.
Companies that want to strive and achieve the elite status of being Customer Obsessed keep their promises…every day with every customer. It is one of their competitive advantages and certainly a differentiator today. Do some introspection and see how your company stacks up in the “Promises Made = Promises Kept” analysis. I’m hoping you are keeping all the promises you make.
If you have any questions about this, just ASK…I would be happy to share some additional insights with you. Or if you feel you need to talk about this in more detail, I’m happy to sit down with you and give you some deeper insights, complimentary of course…that’s one of my promises. Either way, I would love to hear from you either in a comment, via e-mail, or a phone call to hear what you found out about your own organization. I know it will be eye opening for you…the only question is what you will do next.
