Cheap advertising

It is not always easy to differentiate yourself from others when you are selling the exact same item.

You can differentiate yourself by being cheaper, having the closest store, the best website or showroom, and the item in stock. But on some occasions you are given a golden opportunity to show a customer a difference they didn’t expect and win them over for life.

Our Winning Appliances drivers delivered a fridge and an oven to a house on NSW’s South Coast and were met with a ‘square peg, round hole’ challenge when they arrived.

Not only did the oven and fridge not fit through any doors, but there were also a narrow set of internal stairs to negotiate, a steep driveway, and a tree in the way.

Our truck drivers are empowered to make spontaneous decisions to help the customer in any situation. Therefore, they negotiated the stairs, pulled apart the fridge to make it fit through the front door and up the narrow stairs, took off a door and cut down a few tree limbs to make sure the customer received the ordered goods.

Once inside, all appliances were put back together and installed. The process took 2.5 hours for the job to be complete, but the boys were rewarded with pizza from a happy customer.

When you say you go the extra mile for your customers, you need to live by your statements. I’m really proud to have a team that can assess each delivery and make the right decisions that put the customer experience first. Always.

It is not always the case that you get these opportunities to go over and above for the customer and in some cases safety or the situation just does not allow a solution right then and there. However, we are yet to find a challenge we have not been able to overcome. We have done deliveries using bobcats, boats, using custom made purchase systems to lower items off balconies, pulled fences down, roofs off and frequently pull products apart and put them back together as is the case here.

Next week we have organised a big crane that will position a smaller crane to place a large Sub-Zero fridge into a customer’s house as there was simply no other way to get this sized fridge inside. It is the fridge the customer wants and it is our job to find a way to get it in their house. Once we do, I am sure we will have a customer for life and a brand advocate worth far more than any paid advertising.

Below are some images of this week’s epic delivery.

The steep driveway our drivers had to negotiate

One of our drivers shows off his pruning skills

Through the narrow pathway…

And up an even narrower staircase…all in a day’s work.

John Winning is CEO of Winning Group: Appliances Online, BigBrownBox.com.au, Winning Appliances, and Handy Crew.