www.aami.com.au AAMI has one of the best Customer Service Charters I have seen. If you have a publicly stated Customer Service Charter, compare it to AAMI’s. If you don’t, you can do a lot worse than using AAMI’s as a blueprint to start developing your own Charter. But remember, having a Charter is one thing, putting it into action on a daily basis is what matters to your customers. Click on the previous edition's link at the end of this newsletter to access Touchstones # 2 which provides more details.

Once upon a time, business was simple in that all transactions were in cash. Someone then came along and complicated matters by introducing cheques as a form of payment, followed by credit cards, EFTPOS, and now internet transactions.

Business today needs to provide a range of payment options for customers.

A few years ago, I was in the market for some home furniture. After visiting a number of home-ware stores I found what I was looking for. However, I ended up purchasing some similar furniture from another store because that first store didn’t accept the credit-card that I wished to pay for it with. They said, ‘we don’t accept that card because the merchant fees are too high’. The profit they lost out on due to me going elsewhere would have paid their merchant fees for 12 months.

Like it or not, plastic is rapidly becoming, if it isn’t already, the payment preference of choice for most customers. And what with credit free periods, fly-buy, frequent flier and incentive points to be obtained everywhere, who can blame them.

It is therefore important that you accept all major credit-cards including American Express, Diners, Mastercard, Visa and if you have Japanese customers, JCB cards as well. You may only get presented with some of these cards once a month, yet the profit on that one sale may pay the rent on your business premises for several weeks.

Many customers still prefer to pay for their purchases by cheque. The problem that sometimes arises is that a percentage of cheques have a habit of bouncing. This should not stop you from accepting cheques as a form of payment as there are many companies that provide instant cheque clearing facilities. Some of these services require a phone call to be made, however electronic cheque ‘readers’ are now available. Sure there is a cost to these services, however the cost is minimal when compared to the potential profit on lost sales.

Electronic Funds Transfer at Point of Sale (EFTPOS) is the fastest growing payment option for customers. The great advantage of EFTPOS is that the funds are deposited directly into your bank account at the time of the transaction. If you don’t have this facility, GET IT!

Increasing numbers of customers, particularly business customers, prefer to pay their accounts via the internet. Be sure to include all your bank account details on your invoices so that your customers can pay you this way if they so choose.

And last but not least, accept cash. It maybe becoming rare, however you still need to have the facilities in place to accept it.

Until next week, many happy customer returns!

Graham Harvey APS

Watch out for Graham’s new book Seducing the Vigilante Customer – winning strategies to guarantee the return of happy customers and healthy profits, available in all good book stores early in 2002.

Previous newsletters available at www.grahamharvey.com.au/Articles/

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