If you own a business and you charge premium prices, I’d love to know what you would do in this situation.
Probably the only moment in your brand more important than your first impression (those first seven seconds) is the moment where customers put your brand promises and your trustworthiness to the test.
Probably one of the least sexy and most important parts of your brand is not what you look like or what you say you are, it’s what you actually do when things don’t go to plan.
If you charge premium prices and then when something goes wrong your customer doesn’t feel supported, you have lost them for life. And if you charge premium prices, it stands to reason that the lifetime value of one customer is really high, so losing someone because they’re disappointed with how you handled a bit of conflict is really expensive.
This might seem simple when you’re in charge, because you make all the rules and you do all the customer service. But the second your brand gets bigger than you (you have a team, you have other people handling these things) that is where brand culture starts to matter. And it’s not just your policies and rules, it’s how they’re enforced, and how the customer feels as a result of interacting with them.
As a business owner, boundaries are super duper important. But how those boundaries get communicated, and when, and what happens when the customer is really disappointed as a result, will completely define what your brand actually is to the people who give you money.
The thing I want you to remember is that we are not trying to always get it right. You will never, ever be able to do that. Perfectionists, I’m looking at you. I understand, I’m a recovering perfectionist too, but god, if midlife and perimenopause have taught me anything, it’s that you’re not always going to get it right.
What you can always do is aim to make it right. Even when you don’t get it right, you make good on the promise you made your customers in that first impression, when they first joined you, when they first bought from you. What they believed about you then is what they want to believe about you now. And if you’re letting that belief down over some stupid squabble about a policy that could be flexible, you should be flexible.
Most of us business owners are always trying to avoid mistakes.
We’re trying to avoid conflict. We never want a situation where a customer isn’t happy, or needs something from us that feels uncomfortable.
But the reality is the longer you’re in business and the more customers you have, there’s no avoiding it.
And if you’re a brand that’s trying to build on trust, on being human (which should be all of you these days), then you’re going to have to be flexible with some of those rules and policies. You’re going to have to use generosity strategically. Not so customers can walk all over you or take advantage, but because sometimes that strategic flexibility absolutely makes a customer a fan for life.
One of my favorite examples of this personally is one time I booked train tickets using Virgin….
One of my favourite examples of this personally: I once booked train tickets with Virgin for my husband and kids, and when he actually went to get on the train he was flustered and busy and didn’t see the tickets I’d sent him, so he had to buy a whole new set. Which is expensive. It was about £160, because it was London to up north where we live.
I was devastated. But knowing I’d bought the first set with Virgin, I thought, well, we’ll see. So I went back to them right then, while they were still on the train, and I said, look, my husband’s travelling alone with a four year old and a six year old, he got flustered, he didn’t see the tickets I sent him, he bought new ones. Is there any way you can refund the tickets I bought that they’re clearly not using? They’ve not cashed them in.
And you know what? Even though it was against their policies, and they had every right to say no, they said, in a very human way: oh man, travelling with kids is hard. This one time, absolutely. Happy to do that for you.
That was a great outcome. It’s exactly what I wanted. But even if they’d said, you know what, I can’t refund the whole thing, but here’s a £50 travel voucher for your next booking, that would have shown me they cared. That would have shown me they gave a shit. They felt bad for me, and the policies are the policies, but here’s what we’re going to do.
This is the humanity we all want to be treated with when we’re customers. And therefore it’s the humanity we all need to offer up when we’re business owners.
And this is the humanity we all want to be treated with when we are customers.
As entrepreneurs we sometimes get really caught up in defensiveness or the bottom line. Or we over-give and are too generous all the time and people walk all over us. Finding this line can be tricky. But ultimately people just want to know that you care. They want to know you’re empathetic, that you’re human too and you see their humanity, and they want to be treated like that.
The reason I’m thinking about this on my walk today is this weekend, my husband and I took the kids to a really nice garden centre near us.
This weekend my husband and I took the kids to a really nice garden centre near us. It’s kind of a long story, but ultimately we spent about £100 on lunch for the two kids and the two of us, and we were like, oh, that’s a lot to pay for lunch. But it’s a beautiful place, the food was lovely, we had dessert, and we thought, let’s just enjoy it, we’re here.
We had a couple of gift certificates my mum had gotten us ages ago, and I didn’t know how much was left on them. So after lunch I went up to the till and said, hey, how much do I have left on these? I had some receipts and things in the envelopes that I hadn’t actually looked at yet. And she said, oh, there’s a hundred pounds on this one. Great. And this one is expired.
What?
I knew that gift certificate was originally £250, which is a good amount of money for a gift certificate to a garden centre. It was really generous of my mum, a couple of years after we moved into our house when we were just getting started on the garden. I’d only used it once and I knew I’d spent around £100, so I knew there was more than £100 still on it.
And to have the woman across the counter just say, it’s expired, tough luck. And there was a girl next to her who I think is one of the owners, who was basically like, well, our gift certificate policy is three years, which is way more generous than most people, who are only valid for a year.
And I’m thinking, what are you hoping to solve by being defensive about this policy and telling me how generous you are, while not being generous in this situation, where I’m a little stunned and super disappointed that a minute ago I had a hundred more pounds to spend and that money has just evaporated? It’s not a coupon. It’s cash my mum actually gave your business, and it’s just gone now.
So I was a bit stunned, a bit disappointed. I said, can cash just expire? I thought the UK had consumer protection where gift certificates never expire. (That might be the US, or some states in the US.) Because it’s logical: if you give a business cash, that cash should never go away as long as the business is still offering whatever it is you bought.
The woman at the till said, I totally agree. Is there anything we can do? It just seems like that’s cash, and it’s gone, and it’s a lot of cash. And the other gal said, no, we just talked about this in a meeting, it’s three years and that’s it.
Now keep in mind, I spend a lot of money at this place. Not recently, to be fair, because I’ve been growing my own plants. But it’s the place you go when you want to drive a little further and spend a bit more, because the experience is nice and the ambiance is nice, and everything about this brand is telling you, convincing you, reminding you: this is high quality, this is high touch, and you should expect a lot from us. Case in point, the free plant we came to get, because they gave my daughter’s school vouchers for free plants. Generous, community involved. I love it.
And again, a business has to have boundaries, a business has to have policies and rules. I get that. But to have one of the owners standing there doing absolutely nothing to soften the blow of £100 that someone invested and is now just gone. Zero empathy, zero care, no “I’ll tell you what, here’s a free plant,” or “here’s £25 as a gesture of goodwill.” Where’s the gesture of goodwill? For a brand like this, it is so psychologically inconsistent with who they are all the time in their marketing and branding, and who they were in that moment.
I’d feel differently about it if it was a volunteer or a young kid who said, oh, those are the rules, because that kid doesn’t make the rules. But this woman does make the rules. She has all the power in the world to soften that experience, or make it more aligned with what I expect from a place where you drive further and pay more.
Why Nordstrom’s gets away with it
In the States there’s a brand called Nordstrom’s, and Nordstrom’s is absolutely famous for taking refunds without a receipt at any time. People have abused this policy by returning things they didn’t even buy there (I think there’s a famous story about someone returning a tyre, which is mad). But people spend more at this shop and patronise this shop and are very, very loyal to it, because they know that if they’re not happy with something they bought, they will always be able to return it. Not within fourteen days, not with a really specific set of criteria. Forever.
So a certain type of shopper goes there and is willing to spend more, because they don’t want the hassle. They want to know that if something goes wrong, they’ll be taken care of. And that’s what most people want to know.
Of course you’re always going to have people who take advantage of policies, who try to scam you. That’s true regardless. But those customers who are so valuable because of their lifetime spend, because of their referrals, because of bringing their kids there and shopping for their grandkids there and getting their living room furniture there, they become so loyal to these brands because it’s a little bit outrageous that you’re willing to be that generous. It’s not normal for a business to actually be the brand it says it is in its marketing. And it’s such a delight. It’s such a pleasant surprise when we encounter a brand who is actually true to the image they’re building online.
What I did about it…
Today I sent them an email, because it was really bothering me. I found the receipts from the gift card. There’s £110 left on it, and I have all the receipts from using it.
I sent them a long email about how much I like their brand and the reasons I shop with them, the reasons I’m willing to drive further and pay more than I have to. There are other garden centres closer to me that are less expensive and have nice stuff. I choose this one specifically because I like the brand, because I like the people who run it and what they do for the community, and because they have a really similar policy to Nordstrom’s: if you buy a plant from them and it dies, you can get another one.
That’s such a generous policy, and we’ve actually cashed it in. We bought an olive tree and it died, and they didn’t have that particular tree anymore, so they gave us a voucher for £50 or so, and I got this beautiful rose which is now growing up the side of my wall. What a generous policy, to take back a plant that died. Their whole thing is that if it grows there, it’ll grow anywhere in England, because up here where we live it is cold and it is rainy and they are difficult conditions, and these plants aren’t grown in hot houses, they’re grown outside.
So this is the type of brand, from a psychological consistency standpoint, that you really, really expect to take care of you as a customer. And you reward them as a result with your purchases, your referrals, coming to their workshops and open days, spending way more in the café than you’d spend in any other café. It’s this unspoken agreement, right? You take care of me as a customer, and I’ll pay more than I have to, to come and buy things from you instead of the person who’s cheaper and closer to me.
After my experience this weekend, I feel like they broke that unspoken rule. They let me down. So I emailed them and said, here’s the situation, here’s what happened, here’s how it was handled, and I just feel really disappointed, because it feels so misaligned with what I’ve come to expect from you as a brand. I’m hoping there’s something we can do to work this out.
I didn’t threaten. I didn’t say “or I’ll never come back.” I wasn’t shitty about it. I just explained, and I said how I feel. And we’ll see what they do.
The way they handle this email, once they’ve had time to step back, talk about it, and decide who they want to be, is going to be a really clear indicator of what their brand culture actually is. And I think sometimes it’s also a clear indicator of where the founders, or whoever’s making these rules, are at. Because sometimes you just get really tired and frustrated and defensive about your business, and that is never a good place to be making decisions from, because you’re just so annoyed by everything everyone wants from you all the time. It can be so damaging to the lifetime value you’re getting from your clients, because they don’t care that you’re tired or overwhelmed. They’ve been supporting you this whole time, and now that they need you, they need you to make a decision that’s aligned with who you’ve been to them all along.
So stay tuned to see how they respond, and what they come back with as a... compromise? I literally have the receipts. It was £250, I’ve spent £140, there’s £110 left. And honestly, if they come back and say sorry, rules are rules, then I probably won’t drive further and pay more and go back there again. Because it’s so disappointing to be that inconsistent with what you think a brand is, and to have them not show up as who you wanted them to be, based on the assumptions you’ve made from their marketing and your other experiences.
So again, the moral of this story is not that you must always get it right. You won’t. You will mess up, your team will mess up, you’ll make a decision in the moment that you want to go back on. But you can always make it right.
Having a clear set of values, a clear purpose, a clear personality and identity as a brand makes that easier, because it gives you a North Star for what is and isn’t aligned. For what you do and don’t change your mind about. For the values and personality you want to embody when the shit hits the fan and you have to actually do things that are uncomfortable, or go back on what you’ve said, or be flexible with your policies, or be generous even though it’s a low cash flow month and you don’t want to be because you’ve just been staring at your bills. None of those things matter to your customers.
But do remember that the people who are annoyed, the people who think you might not honour your agreement, the people who are frustrated or had a bad experience: if you can make it right for them, they become your biggest fans. So actually having the opportunity to make it right is one of the most important brand opportunities you have as a business, to create the kind of evangelistic people who love you.
Always getting it right is not the goal. The goal is to make it right, and to have a clear set of priorities and values that make getting it right really easy, without having to feel like you’re always just rolling over and giving in. Having clear boundaries and clear rules is important, but so is knowing when to be flexible based on the circumstances.
So what would you do, if you were the garden centre and this was the situation? What would you do with a £110 expired gift card with receipts? How would you handle this situation? How would you train your team to handle it? How would you empower people to make decisions about situations like this? And how would you respond to my email?
I’m super curious.
