Why do you continue to do business with a select group of retailers, restaurants or suppliers? Maybe some have great prices, a large selection or something specific that you need. I’m betting the farm that it is the attention and service that you receive that keeps you coming back.
In fact, if you receive poor service, detect a poor attitude or experience inferior products you will immediately start looking elsewhere. Top quality, out of your way service is a necessary element of doing business in the specialty retail market today.
The magic success formula you can count on 1 hand
Business success is not as complicated as some experts may try to tell you. The successful steps we take at Nashville Wraps can be counted on one hand:
- Have what you sell
- Do what you say
- Treat others as you want to be treated
- Make a good presentation
Nashville Wraps, as an example has been successful because we treat all people the same. It doesn’t matter if you are a start up or the buyer from a large corporation. We will treat you with respect, honesty and friendliness. Following these principles has been one of the keys to our success for over 30 years. We have an outstanding Customer Service Department that works hard to take your order right every time. And our customer-oriented philosophy is consistent in every department within the company.
Good Example: The real reason behind Zappos’ success
There is a new company that is having phenomenal growth in today’s web-savvy marketplace – Zappos, the online shoe distributor.
In 1998, 24-year-old Tony Hsieh sold his company to Microsoft for $265 million. A year later, he met an even younger entrepreneur, Nick Swinmurn. He had an idea no investor would touch – selling shoes on the Internet. But Tony was intrigued and invested $500,000 in ShoeSite.com. They soon changed the name to Zappos, after zapatos, which is Spanish for “shoes”.
Today, Zappos with over 1,600 employees expects to generate more than $1 Billion in sales this year.
We can all learn from the 10 Core Values Zappos’ employees embrace:
- Deliver WOW Through Service
- Embrace and Drive Change
- Create Fun and A Little Weirdness
- Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded
- Pursue Growth and Learning
- Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication
- Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit
- Do More With Less
- Be Passionate and Determined
- Be Humble
The customer from hell…
Nashville Wraps’ business model has been wrought in part by my experience in dealing with other businesses that I like and dislike. Many have taught us what not to do. Wal-Mart has been very influential. There’s no such thing as service at Wal-Mart, which I dislike, but they do have a great returns policy. The phone company has the absolute worst customer service, so we eliminated excessive hold times to get to our customer service people. I can’t stand to wade through a cluttered web site or talk to sales people who know less about the product than I do, so we have a highly trained staff. And oh, when I want something… I want it now, so we ship within 24 hours. I am the quintessential customer from hell and therefore Nashville Wraps has been crafted to keep people like me happy!
Robby Meadows, Nashville Wraps (with lots of help from Buffie Baril and Tawanda Sanders)
