I have to deviate from my usual topics for a moment to share a Customer Service blunder I experienced at the local A&W restaurant the other day. My family and I were dining in at the A&W and my wife asked the gal running the till if she could replace the chicken burger with a chicken salad instead. The gal said that it would be no problem and gave her a side salad saying she would bring out the grilled chicken to our table shortly.

Well, to make a long story short, the supervisor comes out with a package that included the chicken and a salad and says, "I have added a salad to this grilled chicken package, so I am going to need your other side salad back". ??? "Excuse me?". We all sat their dumbfounded as the supervisor proceeded to grab the side salad from our table to then potentially serve to another customer. He thought it might be worthwhile to take back a salad that probably cost A&W less then 30 cents to make!  Now I don’t want to give this guy too hard of a time, but he ultimately chose to save money over adding value to a regular customer - a huge mistake.

So, for us in the Internet business, we need to constantly look for opportunities to add value to our customers - provide additional bonuses, giveaways,  incentives, new membership features, etc.. to keep users and members continually coming back to our site again and again. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in - if you do not consistently add value to your customers, you will inevitably lose out!

One company that does this very well is Amazon.com. I purchase a lot of web-related books and I really like that they send me alerts and updates on new books in my specific area of interest. They are adding value to me by providing the types of books I want to read - great strategy!

NetFlix.com was another example of a company that decided they were going to add so much value for their customers that it was going to make our brick and mortar competitiors squirm! Well, it worked. NetFlix came out with "No Late Fees" and unlimited rentals for a set monthly membership. People went from the traditional route of renting videos on a Pay Per Video basis to renting bulk loads of favorites DVDs for one fixed monthly cost with no late fees. Another perfect example of providing value-added services.

So, I am sure the A&W supervisor likely does not tune in to my blog, but a rule of thumb young man: "The business that provides the MOST value for their customer always wins"… IMHO!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!