We’ve joined the social networking fray and are now on Facebook and Twitter. Both are good places to stay up to date with what we’re doing and to help spread the word about Shower Power to your friends. So if you already use these platforms to keep track of companies you’re interested in, we hope you follow us so we can communicate with you in these new ways.
Update 7/29: Google Checkout is back up and working perfectly!
FYI…The ability to use Google Checkout is down while we try to fix a problem. Orders were successfully going through but they were not getting to our shipping facitlity, unless we entered them manually. Automation here is key. All other payment methods are working well at the moment.
Customer Service Should Be Easier
Published April 8, 2009 Shower Power News 3 CommentsTags: customer service
Customer Service can be a hard thing to figure out…but it shouldn’t be.
Take for example a recent experience my wife and I had with a company:
We are having our first child in a few months and many of our friends and family were extremely generous and gave us gift certificates to a baby store in our area. Typically, baby stores will go out of their way to be helpful to expectant mothers because they can count on them returning to buy things year after year as their family grows.
But when my wife went into the store to redeem her gift cards, she was told they were no longer accepting gift cards because the company just filed for bankruptcy. So yes, we are out of some great gifts and our family and friends essentially just handed money over to this company, never to be seen again.
No need to get into a debate on bankruptcy law, as that is a topic for another day, but not honoring the gift cards is just a bad policy. While I understand it’s the law, not only did they miss an opportunity to connect with their customers but they upset a new family and their friends who lost money. The people who are buying gift cards in the first place are exactly the people who are recommending that store to their friends. Why would you want to alienate the people who are bringing new customers through your door?
This brings me to Shower Power. While just a small family business, we still want to serve our loyal customer base the best way that we can. Being attentive and listening to our customer’s needs is the first step in creating a life-long relationship with them.
So, if there is anything we can do to help, just let us know.
In case you haven’t noticed yet, we like to do things a little bit differently around here. We could continue with business as usual but really, where’s the fun in that? So we’re trying to mix things up as we go along. We will, of course, continue to provide you with the same product you’ve come to rely on, but we’ll also continue to try out new ideas and solicit your feedback on what works and what doesn’t work along the way.
This is why you now see three major changes at Shower Power:
Our new website
We are so happy to finally unveil this. A very simplified, one-page checkout that will make purchasing Shower Power that much easier.
32oz bottles again
32oz bottles last longer so you don’t have to purchase as often. How great is that?
And more Shower Power for the same price!
Yup, you can now purchase two 32oz bottles (64oz instead of 48oz) of Shower Power for $14.99.
We hope you like the changes we’ve been making…and if you don’t, that’s fine too. Just let us know what you like or don’t like, there’s always the possibility it can be changed!
photo by Leo Reynolds
Shower Power exists because of you, our customers. You recognized a quality product and were verbal about the fact that it actually helped you clean your bathrooms better than any other product out there. So we decided to keep the dream alive, and make it available for sale online.
But instead of focusing on distractions like the marketplace or competition, we asked ourselves some simple questions:
What’s the point? Why are we doing all of this?
Well, the point is to provide quality products and excellent customer service.
Sound familiar? That’s because most half-decent businesses (in any industry) will make the same claim and throw in a bunch of other nonsense as well. So let me explain what these claims mean to us.
Quality
- Quality products actually do what they claim to do
- Quality products are useful in solving customers’ problems
- Quality products have real value
Service
Providing excellent customer service can be more difficult to define and something every company strives for (or should)…
- Excellent service means more than just a contact form or a toll free number, it means actually listening to our customers and taking appropriate action when it is needed.
- Excellent service means setting reasonable expectations yet always trying to exceed them.
- Excellent service means respecting our customers and treating them as we would want to be treated.
Everything else a company takes on, from offering reward points to donating a percentage of profits to charity, while good in spirit, is really just superfluous. Without quality, we would never attain loyal customers and, thus, never have a long-term sustainable business.
Now you may be thinking, what does all this really have to do with cleaning my bathroom? Well, you’re reading this right now because our loyal customers cared enough to contact us and tell us how much they loved our product. They inspired us to keep this company going. So we’re going to stick to the point and continue to bring you products that work and service that’s exceptional.
As long as we stick to the point, your bathrooms (and who knows, maybe even some other rooms too) will always be clean.
So, do you have a point for doing what you do? Please share it in the comments!
