Keep your Business Promises - Online and Offline

Keep your business promises, no matter how small they may be.

Sounds like the most basic of business principles, doesn't it? Why then do so few businesses keep their day to day promises? This is something I've always taken for granted in my business dealings, but my own recent experiences have highlighted how much of a real differentiator reliability can be to online and offline to businesses that excel in this area. If you want to make people remember and trust your brand, keep your promises, no matter how big or small.

Think about it this way. If your business website promises delivery within 24 hours, but your actual delivery time is 48 hours, what does that say to to your customers? Surely 48 hours is still a good turnaround time? Probably not to your customers, at least not any more. Simply put, you have created an expectation in your customers' minds, and your actual delivery has been 100% overtime on that expectation. If your site promised 48 hours, and you delivered on time, I doubt that your customers would pay attention nearly as much to the turnaround time as to the fact that you keep your business promises of timeous delivery.

Now, when it comes time for your customers to assess that big expectation of a one year guarantee on the quality of your products, it will certainly be skewed heavily by your performance on smaller promises to date. When it comes to the big promises, your customer will probably be having some serious doubts about your ability to deliver. After all, if you cannot keep your small promises, it's much more likely that you won't keep your big ones. That makes it very unlikely that customers will believe anything more that you say to them, simply because you didn't even keep a very simple promise made up front. That is bad for referrals, bad for repeat business, and bad for the general reputation of your business.

I recently had need to contract with a number of businesses for various facets of my wedding. Of those that promised to phone me back about something, most who made that promise never did, at least not within the time frame they promised to, and in some cases up to a week thereafter. In most cases I had to follow up and make sure that they delivered according to their promised deadlines.

One of the businesses that I contracted was a small, home-based catering business. When we visited them, we were treated like royalty, and I was promised a phone call on a specific date, a number of weeks into the future. Did I get my call on the specified date? Absolutely. In fact, at the time I was in a meeting with a client, and the caterer not only left messages on all available contact numbers, he phoned me again first thing the following morning, before I had even had a chance to return the messages. So, when it came to worrying about our catering, do you think I did? Not at all. I knew that this was one service provider who always kept his word. So while I spent a great deal of time keeping close tabs on the progress of some of our other suppliers, this was one that I knew I did not need to worry about.

Check the promises made on your website carefully. Are they well-intended but overly optimistic when it comes down to your actual ability to deliver? Do you promise high quality products and services that are actually only reasonable quality, but at a very good price? Chances are that if you sell them as what they really are you will get a far better match of customer expectations to actual results, which results in trust. And the results of customers trusting you is that they will refer you to their friends and make use of your services again, because they got what they expected the first time around.

Another point I should make here relates to first impressions and your first few interactions with prospective and new customers. I am consistently amazed by how many business still have "Contact Us" forms on their website that don't work, or that are not monitored for submissions. If a client emails you with a query, reply promptly and efficiently, and that is how they (probably correctly) will perceive your future communications with them when they really have a pressing need. When you promise to email or phone a customer on a specific date or time, make a note of it and stick to it rigidly. When you promise delivery of a product or service in a certain way, by a certain date, you can be sure that your customer will not be as forgiving as you would hope if you do not deliver as promised. If you really cannot deliver as expected, most people are reasonable if you give them a call to explain the problem, and assure them of your fullest attention at resolving it. Most people will still prefer to deal with a business that encountered difficulties delivering, but explained the problem and worked hard to resolve it, over a business that makes promises and only delivers in their own time.

Think about it. A few small basics that are neglected by your competitors can really make you stand out. After all, is it really that difficult to remember the small things like punctuality, courtesy and efficiency? If you don't, your customers certainly will!