Batteries Included

I purchased two different things this week that needed batteries but did not include them.  Why have we accepted this as the norm?  It’s frustrating to buy something and then have to buy something else in order for the original purchase to be valuable.  I think that ‘some assembly’ should not be required…that’s what I’m paying you for when I purchase your product.  If I wanted to assemble it myself I would just go buy a bunch of parts online and spend a weekend in my garage emancipating my power tools and listening to The Goo Goo Dolls.  When I buy your product I just want it to work.  Period.

Think about your business/product/service.  How can you eliminate ‘Batteries not included’ experiences for your customers?

You don’t have to eat the cost of the proverbial batteries to serve your customers…just build the cost into the price of your product or service to keep your transactions clean and inclusive.  Eliminating ‘gotcha’ fees will go a long way to build loyalty among your customer base.

Have you ever had a great buying experience where everything was as simple and straight forward as it was advertised to be?

I’d love to hear about it!

Read this ASAP to get free Chick-Fil-A

One of my associates at the Chick-Fil-A corporate office sent me an email today with this ad.

Here’s the 5 things I love about it:

• They’re giving me free food
• They picked a day that is memorable and that I’m likely to be available to take advantage of the offer.
• They’re communicating to me with pictures: [you]+[t-shirt]=[sandwich] so I don’t have to read to get the message, only to clarify the message
• They give me options to put a reminder on my calendar.  I use Outlook for everything so I clicked the link and in 5 seconds the reminder went right into my preferred method of organization
• The deal is only good for one day so it creates a sense of urgency because it’s an event

Everything about this ad makes it easy for me to tell friends “Hey, I heard Chick-Fil-A is giving away sandwiches on Labor Day and all you have to do to get one is wear a t-shirt with your teams logo on it!” and so I will…

If you’d like the original email:

• to try out the calendar feature
• to send to your marketing guy for a great example of how to sell your product
• or to forward to your friends

Just email me at daniel.tardy@daveramsey.com and I’ll send it to you.  (I’m not smart enough to know how to make the image in this post do it automatically)