Archive for the ‘USP’ Category
Friendliness, is it your usp?
Friday, June 12th, 2009
Sometimes, I really wonder, if to be successful in business, you have to nasty. Not just a little bit, but ruthless. Look at Bill Gates. He seems as nice as a mill pond on the surface. But, anyone remember the browser wars? Gates tweaked and altered the cards by signing secret deals with hardware manufacturers to distribute systems with Internet explorer pre-installed on the hard disks. Steve Jobs, the much loved Apple King, has the mentality, or atleast Apple has the mentality, of slamming down on anything remotely anti-apple with a heavy lawsuit threat.
Yet, these are 2 huge, profitable companies. It makes me wonder, do you have to be nasty to get anywhere in business? Do you have to be ruthless to push ahead and earn more money?
I don’t think so! As freelancers, we have the unique ability to be friendly, yes, I did say friendly, to our clients. Our clients are absolutely sick to the back teeth of nastiness, of not been cared about! Take for example phone support. Many companies get this completely wrong. They just don’t seem to care about the end-user, the people who make them money. You phone them up, you are given so many numerical choices your central cortex begins to solidify from the stress, then when you shake yourself from your panic frozen mindset, and actually pick a number, you spend the next 20 minutes having to interpret spanglish. To top it all off, this is costing you $10 per minute. Brilliant!
One company I feel get it this nearly spot on are Apple. On the one hand, I’m saying they are ruthless. But in all reality, Apple know where there bread is buttered. By dedicated mac fans. And so they treat us well with great products, great service and the like. When you phone apple up, you usually speak to a native english speaker. And they have brains. They know what they are on about, are super friendly and will even have a joke with you. This adds to a positive user experience, which has numerous advantages, such as word of mouth referrals and the like.
Most freelancers however, are working nomads. We do it all on our own. And when a client phones up, its us they talk to. When they want to come to the office and work through a design, they meet the designer. They can sit with you and actually talk to you, face to face. Its one of our biggest selling points. Friendliness. So go tell your clients how friendly you are!
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