Delivering the Goods, Keeping Your Promise – An Exercise in Client Fulfilment

At the heart of the success or failure of every business is the connection it creates with a customer. Visually. Emotionally. Functionally. Financially. At the heart of that connection is your Client Fulfilment System.

Customer vs Client

What is client fulfilment? It’s the way you do what you do. It’s the way you differentiate yourself from everyone else. It’s the way you stand out, both in the mind and the heart of your customer that turns that customer–somebody who buys from you once–into a client–someone who buys from you again and again.

The truth is, none of us can afford a customer. They’re just too expensive to get.

Every single one of us is looking for clients. Because the return on investment increases each and every time they buy another product or service from you. It is much more cost effective to keep existing clients happy than to acquire new customers. 

Client Fulfilment is something very simple to understand, and very, very difficult to do with any consistency. And yet, when done well, it is very obvious why it works.

Deliver Your Brand Promise

“At its core, your brand promise should define your entire business and should touch every aspect of your company.” – Nick Westergaard, Author of “Get Scrappy”

Creating happiness through magical experiences. – Disney

Be the world’s number one source of information. – Google

Think Different. – Apple

Delivering your brand promise results in loyal, happy clients, ready to advocate for your business and help it grow. Your promise has to be credible. You can’t claim to be a “family-friendly restaurant” if you don’t have high chairs for toddlers. You can’t claim to serve “tasty food, efficiently” if it takes 30 minutes for the food to be ready.

Consider FedEx’s promise “When it Absolutely, Positively has to be there overnight”. If you use FedEx consistently and then one day, your parcel doesn’t arrive overnight, you may consider it as a one off (“that’s not like them!”) However if it happens time and time again, you will lose trust in them, and start looking for other couriers. FedEx stick to their brand promise, and deliver it to their clients consistently. 

In a PwC Survey, one in three consumers (32%) said they will walk away from a brand they love after just one bad experience.

What’s your version of the FedEx experience?

What are you going to do that will turn all of your customers into loving and faithful clients?

What’s your turnkey innovation that will stun your customer’s sensibilities, that will say Whoa! to your customer’s habitual way of responding, that will astonish even the most cynical customer into coming back to see if you can reproduce that original experience, to discover whether or not that first experience was just a fluke?

Where’s the magic? Where’s the mystery? Where’s the ‘profound’ in what you do?

Find it, my friend, and let me know when you do. I’m all ears.