Brand Recognition

Many logos are designed on the cheap, with little thought given to them. Other companies like Macintosh, Xerox, and Lucent spent upwards of half a million dollars each to develop their logos. Then countless millions more to promote them. What they got for their money are symbols that are recognized instantly, around the world. You don’t even need to see a name – the symbol is enough.

A Polished Look for your Business Gets Customers

A good logo helps a company have a clean, professional, polished look. The more clean, stylistic and original a logo is, the more chance there is that it will stand out from the competition and help get those extra sales.

Don’t Try This at Home!

Although it may seem simple, a logo is very hard to design. When you create a logo, you must take an entire company and everything it stands for and refine it down to a simple, graphic representation. It’s the ultimate design challenge.

For more information about all things graphic, contact me at Holly@KrisKnopp.com or my bio page at www.krisknopp.com/the-team/

Overall, the idea is the same–get customers in and make it hard for them to leave.  Now one way to do that is tune in to the customer’s needs, keep them happy, and work with them when they are not a la Zappos. 

Another way to go a la “Company X” is to REALLY make it hard for them to leave… as in it takes 20 minutes in an online chat because there is no other way to contact the site.  Then pitch several value offers for something you have already said you don’t want before finally allowing you to cancel.  BTW–My favorite one is the “let me give you a month free to decide”.  This actually means “let me see if I can make you forget about this for a month and get a couple of more billing charges because you are distracted”. 

My point is, and there is a point, as a business owner, its critical to put some serious thought and planning to your customer services policies.  No doubt the bad customer service I experienced with Company X was functioning exactly as it was designed to and  bringing  the company some extra income from people that were too busy and distracted to actually cancel or ask for customer service.  Not illegal or unethical but certainly not cultivating raving fans that want to tell all their friends either.   In today’s social media and instant information age, can you really afford to have a bad customer service report go viral on you?  The cost to inattention here can kill your business!

So where do you start when designing your customer service policy?  The best place to start is with your own experience and throw in a little research:

1. Make a list of your best and worst customer service experiences.  What do they have in common?  What kind of experience do you want your customers to have? Cast the vision for what you want to create.
2. What steps can you take to replicate (or avoid)  these experiences in your own customer service policy? Do some research and see what other companies you respect are doing.
3. Write your customer service policy and post it on your website.   As an added bonus, the search engines like to see that you have policies and terms.  It helps them identify you as a legitimate business which can translate into more SEO love.

In the end, it all comes down to what experience you want to create for your customers and business… and what you are willing to do to provide that for them.