Discussion on:

A little something extra

How to you engage your clients person to person?

but it's amazing how much good will a service technician can build with just a couple of screen wipes.

Little things like that say "I'm taking care of you."

but in many cases it really says, "Gods of us all, how can you see anything through those fingerprints and pizza grease???" But the user doesn't need to know that.

My grandfather utilized this approach in truly significant ways. As Chairman of a packaging consulting firm, Edgar Steiner & Company (see True Magazine, August 1959 issue for a profile), he sent out corporate thank-you letters for sales and with them a small gift - a plaque, a medal, etc that were created for this purpose. One plaque, "There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn't mind who gets the credit" was sent to Justin Dart of Dart Industries in the 1950s. Reagan knew Dart, liked the plaque, pocketed it and it wound up on his desk in the Oval office. True, it's right there. Also attributed to Robert Woodruff of Coca Cola - same phrase, same plaque and Steiner worked for Coca Cola in the late 1950s too. Guess where that plaque came from??? Small things go a long way. I delivered a box of doughnuts to the law office today. Six were gone in about 2 hours.

My mechanic told me the install of the part I bought and brought to the shop should take an hour. It took 2, mostly because my part came with fittings that didn't fit my vehicle. My mechanic apologized for the delay, and didn't charge me more than the quoted hour. He could have, and I'm sure many shops would have, and I would have paid. But he wants to keep customers happy, so he doesn't worry about the small stuff.

When I was consulting and billing hourly, once the first hour was past, I never incremented to the next hour, until I gave them a full hour of work . They knew I spent many fractional hours on them for free, and that built trust and loyalty.

If you treat your clients the way you would like to be treated as a client, if you do little things for them that lets them know you are thinking about them, but do them without expectation of immediate reward you can gain loyalty, and it always costs less to keep a customer happy than to find a new one.

As a field tech, something as simple as a folowup phone call after a service call the previous day can go a long ways towards building clients trust and insuring you'll be the first they call when trouble erupts again. Cleaning a display screen and a few baby wipes on a dirty keyboard helps to keep them thinking of you even after you're gone.

This is the kind of intangible stuff that makes all the difference between success and failure in business (and not just from a monetary point of view).

This one really hits home; I think it's one of the defining characteristics that can give a small business/consultancy the edge over larger, more impersonal organizations. Good job!

That little something extra can be something as small as fixing formatting for a client that's too rushed to do it themselves, or sending them articles on topics relevant to their industry or business. It does go a long way!

i deeply agree with this concept, but to be able to effectively apply you need to be able to spot the coffe, the toy car collection and so, and depending on the size of the organization, you have to apply an appropriate way to let people know that this was your move.

either you have to learn an at least half thousand-item list of examples and their suggested solutions or you have to be an artist. the walk-on-thin ice nature of being personal enough to touch someone (so that they think of more than your price/perfornance ratio) but not to hurt privacy is an additional technique of this art.

and what if there is a client where you really feel that you need to find their targeted something, like the coffee or the toy car, and the idea simply does not come?

so why not start collecting (the stories that were and are really effective)

Having spent time on both sides of this fence (and expecting to do so again ere the end of my career), what Chip and many of you are saying is quite true: small kindnesses cost little and have high dividends. However, it is not a 'technique' or artifice as those would be recognized as fake and do more damage than good. The common thread to all of these stories is empathy - the ability to care about a customer as individuals - and that is what makes any business successful. It sounds trite, but an application of the 'Golden Rule' is ever a solid foundation for human interaction, whether for renumeration or no.

for long time the relation of business and coffee so strong also other like "bebsi,coca cola..." and be famous in it because of energtic our brain with extra energy so we preference coffee with diet to be no dangeraous on healthy especially heart.

All of the Project Managers I have ever had to deal with, on 15 major ERP implementations in the past 10 years, absolutely balk at the ideas that this makes a difference. They would not share absolutely any budget whatsoever, as minimal as this may seem on projects that are $200 million in budget and more, and I was even punished several times for doing the "special little thing" for my client resources by myself!

For example, I once ran the UAT for FI/CO modules at one client, and I seconded a meeting room for this purpose. I knew the client resources would hate to have to come to that room to do the tests, and they would not want to stay in that room for any length of time and would "short" the tests I need them to execute and report on as a result. SOLUTION: I bought cookies, bags of candies, taffy, and good coffee and put it in the room... and I did two more things: (1) I set the rule that you were only entitled to these goodies if you were testing in the room, and (2) I made "public awards of goodies" to those who completed test cases (with good or bad results... I needed to know about both, after all). THE RESULT: We finished all test cases over 1 week ahead of schedule. Guess what... the PM still gave me hell for doing this out of my own pocket and, yes, it cost me a total of several hundred dollars... BUT I got the test done with spectacular results...

When I think I have behaved a little over-aggressively with my clients or my co-consultants, I apologize... not only do I apologize, but I apologize with boxes of chocolates and gourmet coffee. We ALL need to apologize at times, especially in the world of being a consultant on ERP implementations... do it with the effort that garners returned smiles.

And, sometimes, I just do these things for no reason at all. That's the best. I learned a long time ago that flowers to a girlfriend were actually a gift to myself (in many ways, but mainly because of the joy my actions gave her)... but flowers to a girlfriend when there was no apparent or obvious reason for them made me the "king of men" in her eyes.

Simply put, my service to a client is founded the most in my relationship with that client. Secondary is my knowledge. Trust, a level of service beyond the norm, and maximized communication... those are the #1 keys to success! You will only meet the challenge if you do those special things that go beyond the usual consultant-client replationship, and the result will be increased honesty and communication from your client that allows you to provide your knowledge to them even better.

Some things never go out of style--this is right out of the Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People school. A nice read, available at any DAV store.

Two quick comments - 1. See subject line: when I was in charge of IT, I did not take anything from a vendor unless all the crew received something - avoid the appearance of evil, so to speak. 2. (not an advertisement) if you are going with Coffee - I'd suggest www.coffeefool.com.. PK

i mean how effective on mode!!!!!!