Practical creativity – Exceed customers’ expectation and get more business

We often hear about ‘thinking out of the box’ to solve our day to day issues, challenges and problems. One of my ‘e-friends’, Al Bagocius, who owns a packaging company, provided me with his ideas i.e. practical wisdom on solving issues which he faced during his work and his ‘home-grown’ solutions. Al is CEO at The A & I Consulting Group/Creative Packaging Solutions and is very active on linkedin groups. In this article, he has provided three practical examples from his business on :

How has the credo “Provide customers and prospects with products and services that go beyond their expectations” produced new business:

1) The F161008 Problem
A large office equipment corporation had been buying printed boxes from me by the thousands that had their logo and return address on the outside of the box and their part #”F161008″ on the inside. As you can well imagine, this is a type of company that has a high priority for attaching their part numbers to all their components. As many companies do. they practice J.I.T. Just In Time delivery of vendor components for specific scheduled assembly and shipping.

On a particular run of these boxes, my plant did not print part number “F161008.” Upon receipt of the boxes, I followed up with my customer and solved the problem in this manner — I went to a local stationery store and had a rubber stamp made up with the letters, “F161008″ and hand stamped all 2,500 boxes with the part number “F161008″ at my customer’s warehouse. Enduring sneers and jeers from the warehouse employees, I accomplished the task in about three hours. I passed substantial discounts back to my customer for the problem. My customer and their management team were so impressed with my effort to solve the problem my plant caused that they have since given me four other custom products to produce for them.

2) The Wrong Address
A management training company was relocating their office. Historically I did one of their smaller program binders, roughly 500 quantity approximately every six months. Meanwhile, a large binder manufacturer was producing the binders for their flagship program, which incorporated over 10,000 binders every six months.
The binder I was doing was the first series with their new address. The office manager signed off on the proof of the address change she gave me and we went into production of the new 500 binders. Upon receipt of their new order, the office manager was in tears that she gave me an incorrect street number for their new address.
Here is how I solved the problem: I redid the binders with the correct address at my cost. I donated the incorrect binders to a local school. The management team of the training company, after hearing about this, proceeded to offer me all of the future orders of their flagship program binders, trusting me to be their sole binder vendor. This major account provided the impetus to further grow my business and to this day is an account where our relationship is like a close family.
3) The $450.00 Ring Binder

 
I was a minor vendor in a large information technology firm. I was one of many vendors serving the marketing needs of the organization. The marketing services manager put out to bid a new reception area binder. The only problem was she needed only three. We all know making only three of anything is cost prohibitive especially when considering amortizing stamping dies over a production quantity of three.

My response to the marketing services manager was that I would do it at no cost as a token of appreciation for the business I received thus far. She and her management team were taken aback but accepted my offer. The news of my offer and the resulting elegant looking binders that I produced ran up and down the corporate food chain that has since opened the flood gates for new business from several departments of the company. I couldn’t have spent $450 any wiser to receive new business.

Over the years, with corporate logo changes, I have done the reception binder for this customer two additional times, all at my cost.

Thank you Al for sharing your practical wisdom.

Readers may share their experiences. After going through the above ideas, I was thinking that we can apply the similar approach in our daily lives too. We have customers i.e. people around us whom we serve, in our jobs, in our professions, in our communities. If we decide that we are going to exceed their expectations, we can win their trust, loyalty and respect.

Note: Al Bagocius blogs regularly at http://albagocius.wordpress.com/