Daniele Piani, Marketing and New Media Adviser at Bliss Corporation in Italy, offers some advice on how to make your customer’s removal magical.
In this article I would like to look at two words that don’t seem to be a perfect match: marketing and (international) removals.
I really don’t know the situation in other countries, but the Italian removals market is a very fragmented one. There are innumerable companies with the same characteristics that practically offer the same things.
The most used (or abused?) phrases are:
- The lowest price on the market;
- The removals specialists;
- The number 1;
- Our experience dates back more than 100 years.
These attributes are popular with customers. Who wouldn’t want to save money on a removal service? Who wouldn’t want to choose an expert? Who wouldn’t want to rely on those that have long experience in market? But all this is not enough, not any more.
So how can the customer choose? All he would be thinking is: Is the price right? Will my things arrive at destination? Are we sure that this is what motivates people when choosing a removal company? We live in a world of many – too many – choices. Why should the customer choose you?
A new way to look at marketing
At Bliss, we don’t intend marketing to be a way of persuading people to purchase our service. Such a perspective is wrong from the start. Marketing means accompanying the customer from the beginning to the end of the service to give him/her a magical experience. We like to define it as a WOW experience. Those customers that just want rock-bottom prices and low-quality services, or who want excessive compromises, are simply not our customers.
A removal can be looked at in two ways: as a time of great anxiety or as a beautiful journey that will lead you from one place to another. We decided to make this gift to our customers.
Here are three ways of transforming a relocation into something more:
Know your customer
At Bliss, we study and analyse our customers. We ask: What kind of demographic characteristics do they have? What questions do they ask when choosing a service? What do they need?
Three simple questions that make a world of difference in understanding them and being able to analyse them in the best possible way. Only by getting to know them well will it be possible to access the second phase, that is building a story around them.
The power of stories, we are the creators
An Italian book that really changed my way of marketing, entitled “L’Officina del racconto” (The Workshop of the Story) by Angelo Marchese, describes in a vivid and clear manner the power of stories.
Since the dawn of time, man was fascinated by stories. The transformation of something inanimate into a story really captures those listening to you. Let’s put this into context:
- There is a main character who must leave a place and go to another one (the customer);
- There is a hidden enemy who must absolutely be defeated (stress and the disasters caused by bad work);
- There is a helper who can greatly simplify his/her task (the mover);
- There are magical powers that make all this happen (the service offered by the removal company).
We should think about the removal as if it were a story. We are not the main characters but we help them throughout their journey. Every phase of their story may be facilitated by us in many ways: through constant communication, customised service, human contact and empathy and the prompt resolution of problems.
This is how everything that is behind a service becomes a human relationship. This is what really makes the difference. The human relationship, with customer satisfaction, is what makes people say good things about us, not just the price, don’t you think?
Use magic …
Remember the magical powers I talked about previously? I am a great fan of two film series that became famous from the year 2000 onwards: Harry Potter and The Lord of Rings.
Although both films were full of normal people - the Muggles, as Harry Potter called them - who were the ones you remember more? The wizards! Those who transformed the ordinary into the extraordinary. Isn’t it so?
Put that into the context of international removals, and what makes more sense? Do just enough to get by, or Leave one’s customers happily overwhelmed?
The next time you have to plan your future services, give it a thought.