National Clothesline

People remember what they feel. That is, the intensity and clarity of memory depends on emotions. This is a cardinal rule of business.

How well do you remember where you were, what you were doing, who you were with and how you heard about John Kennedy’s assassination?

How about the World Trade Center bombings?

We have a very clear memory of these events because they were emotional experiences. To utilize this important trait of the human memory to your best business advantage, we have to map out a plan to build an emotional tie between our businesses and our customers. By doing this you can forever implant the memory of your business in the minds of your customers. This is how “top-of-mind” awareness is best created. And it will stay with your customers forever.

Of course, we don’t want to create just any emotion. We want to create a positive emotion. A feeling of love and caring. That kind of emotion can be impenetrable by the competition.

A negative emotion can be just as damaging to your relationship with your customer as a positive emotion can be beneficial. Overcoming a negative emotion, brought on by a bad experience with your company, will cost you more to rectify, and take more effort, than creating a hundred positive emotions. That’s why it’s so important to make every encounter a customer has with your business a positive one.

Creating positive emotions begins before the customer ever sets foot in your store or has that first route order picked up from home. It begins when a potential customer first hears about your business.

They may first hear about you from a friend, neighbor or relative. If you’re working hard to establish positive emotions with your current customers, prospective customers will hear positive things about you and have a positive mind set, even before they begin to do business with you.

Have you ever heard great things about a particular restaurant? Didn’t you have a positive attitude toward the restaurant, even before you went there for the first time? That set the stage for you to have a positive experience. For you to have a negative experience at this restaurant, a lot of things would have to go wrong. Not just one little thing. One little thing wrong would be overlooked if you had already heard positive things from people you trusted.

That’s the way it is with your business. No business is perfect. But minor mistakes can be overcome by going out of your way to create positive relations with your customers, before the mistake happens.

The first encounter with your business may only be that they drove past your location. A bright, clean, well-lit, attractive store creates a positive emotion in itself. And the reverse is true. A store that has not been repainted, refurbished, redecorated or re-signed in 20 years is going to make the customer suspect the quality of its work, even before they have that first garment cleaned.

Often, the first encounter a customer has with your business is your advertising. Is it professionally done? A poorly presented ad gives a poor impression about your business. Is it in the right medium? A high-end drycleaner will not be perceived that way if their advertising is on the back of cash register receipts. Is it in color? Color looks more real to the customer. It creates a more positive image of your business. It actually generates a 35 percent greater response than a black-and-white ad.

Using a customer’s name during any transaction is the next step in establishing positive emotions. Using a person’s name shows you care about that person, that you’re not looking at them as just another bundle of clothes, that you see the person as an individual.

Using phone numbers to identify customers in your POS system may work best for you, but does it work best for the customer if it’s at the expense of their identity? Do you know anyone who thinks of himself by his phone number instead of his name? I didn’t think so.

The whole concept of using phone numbers to identify customers may seem extremely efficient. And it is. But is it getting in the way of a genuinely emotional contact between you and your customers?

Doing something nice and unexpected for your customers will solidify the emotional bond you wish to create with them. Married people know what I’m talking about.

What happens when you bring home an unexpected bouquet for your wife? OK, she may think you’ve done something wrong. But once she gets over that, she’s thrilled that you were thinking about her, and making her happy, even when you weren’t together.

The same can work with your customers. Send them something, or do something for them when they’re not in your store. Let them know that you’re thinking good things about them even when they’re away. This is the best way to win their hearts and build a bond that can’t be broken.