There's No Need To Have Your Clients Suffer From Industry Artifice

How many times have you been sat in a support call queue, twiddling your thumbs, being passed from support agent to support agent? In those moments, we wish the business we need to contact could just focus on making the user experience more efficient, or at least more communicative.

There are many small measures of frustration involved with organization and making any process work at all. After all, when installing a swimming pool in the garden, we need to clean and fill it to ensure its proper use. But this metaphor doesn’t necessarily translate well to artifice, that is unnecessary obstacles that can feel overridingly false and tiring.

Many businesses are starting to focus on these issues to increase the chance of business while also preventing their clients from becoming annoyed. This also adds to efficiency. Many banks, for instance, are using voice-activated security options to help their users pass security checks before they even speak to an agent. This speeds things up.

This begs the question - how can YOUR business avoid having clients suffer from industry artifice? Isn’t this something worth taking care of? With the following advice, we hope to explore that topic together:

Clearly Explain Your Services

You simply cannot explain everything to your customers, and especially new customers, when they come in. You can see how well signposting and messaging is received by how easily customers conform to your process. For instance, take a bar and charcuterie operating in a trendy inner-city location. People walk in, but there’s no queue system. They don’t know if they should grab a table. There are tables, but rarely staff walking around taking orders. Should they order at the bar? These things should be directly communicated from the beginning, even with a sign, to help them understand what it is you offer and how to go about asking for it.

This can seem so simple, but remember, unless you explicitly explain something, people aren’t likely to assume. A simple sign or set of instructions can help you, even arrows or stop signs can help people come to the right places. With that kind of intuitive description, they’ll be much more likely to understand your process.

Pricing Options That Work

How are clients and customers regularly billed within your industry? Do they pay for services straight up, or do you invoice them? Consider Netflix, and how their pricing model has changed. Before, you could rent DVD’s for a flat rate or sign up to their monthly mailing scheme. Now - you pay a flat subscription for access to all of the streaming content as part of their services. If you can understand how your industry works, and seek to avoid some of that artifice through the billing system, you have subverted a very important principle. This may work out in your favor quite well. Even mobile phone contracts are now being rivalled by contract-free SIM cards, that allow for monthly minutes and texts at the price of a normal balance top-up. 

Again, freeing your clients from industry artifice isn’t only a benefit for them, it can greatly impact how convenient your business process is, and how easily you onboard new users.

As Comprehensive A Service As You Can Offer

It’s also important to curate as comprehensive a service as you can offer. There’s no problem with specializing, but it’s important to telegraph that. For instance, a mechanics and garage that does not install the best vehicle hoists will simply be unable to work on the engine with any kind of accessibility, and that can limit the services they offer. An investment like this can help open up your potential servicing to a wider range of clients.

Furthermore, while some companies do get away with specializing and are famed for it - for the most part, customers would rather be able to have a fully serviced package in one place. We don’t attend a mechanic’s lot for fun, we do so because we need our car to undergo inspection or repairs. As a business owner, keep this principle in mind.

Thorough, Updated Communication

Social media apps are a great way to keep your clients up to date. Think about how many times you have Google’d the opening times of certain businesses in recent memory thanks to Covid-19 and the resulting lockdowns. Did they make it easy for you to understand how they were operating? Or did you have to dig and contact them yourself? As those in charge of businesses, we can learn from these answers.

With this advice, we hope you can more easily help your clients avoid suffering from industry artifice.