Personal touch with your customers builds your business.

This happened over the last couple of weeks.

I needed a prototype of a design that I was working on. Searched online and hit up on this supposedly industry leader ALPHA in prototype making. Uploaded a file onto their website to get a ball park quote. Looked at their prices and searched around for better deals. Later uploaded the same file to a dozen more websites to get quotes. Some of them were less than the ALPHA quote.

Couple of hours later this sales guy from ALPHA called up to follow up on what else he could offer to win our business. Talked to him for a while about some industry standards, material options available, etc and he answered all my questions politely.

He informed me that the price of 1 part would be $200.00 whereas the price of 16 parts would be just $264.00. Liked the proposal and sent the purchase order. Specially informed him that I needed the parts yesterday.(Yeah, not a typo, that is the word used when you want something ASAP)

Got it shipped overnight and received the package 2 days after and the parts exactly served my purpose. Liked the quick response and delivery and sent a feedback mail thanking them for the good experience I had doing business with them. Immediately got a personal reply from their CEO thanking me from my feedback.

This flattered me as a customer to know that this was a company where the CEO was in the grind of building personal relationships with customers. Decided that this is the company that I would do all my business with. What did the CEO do different to gain me as a trusted customer and invaluable goodwill?

Nothing much, just a personal thank you mail. How much did it cost him. Just 2 minutes of his time and no extra cost.

OK, and now what do they need to do to win me as a customer forever, bowl out their competitors and develop a personal relationship with me?

The last nail in the coffin was just nailed 10 mins ago.

Just got a gift package from ALPHA thanking me for doing business with them and giving them valuable feedback.

What was inside it? FudgeyNut and cookies.

How much did it cost them? Maybe 10 bucks.

What did they do? They surprised the customer with something he did not expect. They could have offered a discount. But chose a more touchy option of a gift to build the personal relationship instead of a monetary reward. More about this later.

What did they gain? They’ve won unwavering trust from their customer in a very competitive environment.

Finer nuances: The action of giving a personal gift rather than a monetary reward in the form of a discount has more to it than what meets the eye. A discount would benefit the customer company but would not give any incentive to the guy who actually makes the purchase. But with the personal gift, they build a relationship with the key person who actually decides which company should win his business. It could be the purchasing manager, the project engineer or even the maintenance guy.

Certainly an important lesson to remember when you are working in a competitive environment and all your competitors can provide more or less the same. That is when, you go above and beyond the line to build a relationship with your customer.