Make it Easy to Do Business with You
Over lunch last year, the CEO of Clearspring Technologies was telling me that whatever you do, you have to make it easy to do business with you.
That always stuck with me.
Allowing customers to interact with you in as easy way as possible is such a simple concept, that it’s amazing that businesses don’t do it more often.
It made me think about everything, from my credit cards to rental properties.
Speaking of the former, I have two cards, a Discover Card and MasterCard (by Citibank). I only got the MasterCard because Discover isn’t taken by as many places.
However, among the two cards, Discover has superior customer service, superior website interface, and the more extensive use of points (please…getting a card without “cash back” benefits is sinful).
MasterCard has horrible customer service (although, it’s gotten better), the user interface is okay, and the cash back is one dimensional (they’ll only cut me a check, while Discover’s cash back can be use to pay my Discover bill, increase buying power with its retail partners, and donate to charities).
Discover Card makes it easy for me. I really wished it was taken more places. My gut says that they might charge higher exchange fees and other charges to merchants, but it might also be due to limited demand. My brother and his partner always tease me about the lack of acceptance, with an analogy to a Family Guy episode where, in the future, a merchant says that he hasn’t taken Visa or MasterCard in years, but he’s NEVER taken Discover. It’s a shame they won’t let that joke die.
As far as rental properties, why not make it easy for applicants to review the apartment or house (via video), fill out an application and pay the application fee, all online? In many cases, people are looking at multiple places in a day/week and may come back to our place. Making it easy to come back, fill out an app and pay the app fee online sets us apart from 99% of our competitors. Based on feedback, it’s one of the reasons why we’ve been able to rent as successfully as we have.
Other things that could be done are to allow monthly rental payments via auto debit or online and request minor maintenance repairs online. The latter is when we have scale (like 10 units or more).
It’s a simple concept that can be very easy or difficult to implement, but has enormous ROI.
UPDATE:
I just noticed that when I tried to download a version of MasterCard’s virtual card number software, you can only do it if you have Netscape. How many people use Netscape??? Neither Discover or MasterCard offer support for Firefox, though.
Also, I realized later that other issuing banks may have a better experience for customers for the MasterCard than Citibank.
