In product fulfillment, there’s no place for hucksters. Sure, there are a lot of so-called product fulfillment pros who have all kinds of get-rich ideas. But not only is this morally questionable and a terrible way to trick the public, it really misses the point of good business: to keep a roster of dedicated clients who will return to purchase your well delivered goods and services, again and again.
If the name of the game for you is good business, your product fulfillment practices depend on you amassing and satisfying clients more than just once. Going further, it’s up to you to invest a little time and effort into this matter of how to gain the long-term business commitment of your client base. This matter, better known as customer relationship management, has an aspect of science to it, which can be learned over time.
The ultimate goal of customer relationship management is two-fold: it’s about getting clients and then holding on to them. Customer relationship management achieves this goal by focusing on how businesses that use product fulfillment can make offers to clients. From there, it’s about offering the same sorts of services to keep a long customer lifecycle over time. A customer lifecycle can be finite depending on how well the business survives over time—thus you want to do what you can to ensure both last for as long as possible.
There are a few options with customer relationship management, but once you realize the job involved, you can plan to make the long-term commitment with your clients straightaway.
More Than Your Bread and Butter
Moving beyond customer relationship management, it’s best to regard your product fulfillment business as you if it were a special club. You want to create a good image of quality for what you do professionally, while at the same time making clients feel special for their involvement with what you can do. There are plenty of product fulfillment businesses out there offering half-baked services, so when you show your business is different, not only do you make others happy, you make yourself look great, too.
There are dozens of ways you can show your business is different. To name just a few: when doing your customer acquisition practices, you can offer special memberships and discounts for joining; when doing up your catalogues, putting a little extra into their designs, seasonal promotions, and offering certain specials through their ordering process can beef up your client lifecycle across the board; and of course, as it sometimes happens, if you make a mistake along the way, offering some sort of courtesy such as a gift or discount to the client can help keep client relationships in check. That’s just good customer service; there’s no problem with the odd error, provided you do something about it and overcompensate when correcting it. People will appreciate that—and will remember that effort.
In all, you are treating your business like a special club because you want to bring clients the quality they expect. You’d want the same if it were you on the other side of the client-business relationship, and you’d see yourself as more than just a business’ bread and butter. This perspective of being exclusive to offer the exclusive is perhaps worth considering for branding.
Invisible Bull’s-Eye
Actually, there’s another analogy you can use for illustrating the science of good client relationships in product fulfillment. Mastering good client relationships in product fulfillment is like what a biathlon entrant will focus on in the Olympics, which is just like you when you see each client relationship as a job on which you need to focus and execute your play right on and dead center. When you focus on your bull’s-eye, you will be addressing your target market, their needs, and what they want over the long-term—proper execution to the maximum.
No matter what concept you want to follow, it’s all about building and sustaining client dealings that are incomparable in terms of quality, service, and success. Really great product fulfillment businesses last because they take the time to do great work—hitting the bull’s-eye. They realize that the people who buy their products are more than just clients, and they are willing to do the work to keep that adage going for a very long time.
Need solutions to your product fulfillment problems? APS Fulfillment, Inc has the knowledge and services to make your direct mail and product fulfillment ventures more successful. Contact APS Fulfillment, Inc by e-mail at [email protected], visit its web site at www.apsfulfillment.com, or call (954) 582-7450.
