How to Prevent Customers From Doing Something

You're running your business pretty mighty fine, but you start noticing a trend of repetitive questions that your website already answers:

1. "How do I make the product do X?"
2. "How do I make the product do X?"
3. "How do I make the product do X?"
4. "How do I make the product do X?"
5. "How do I make the product do X?"
6. "How do I make the product do X?"
7. "How do I make the product do X?"

Every call to your customer service team, for instance, results in $10 in costs -- as you start racking those charges up-and-up-and-up.

You've tried getting your customers to read the little manual that came with the product, and you also blasted a headline on your manual that your website will answer 99.9% of their questions -- but they continue calling you, draining profits.

What in the whole wide world do you do?

Enforce financial mechanisms ("If you want ______, that will cost you $___").

For instance, to prevent your staff from repetitively unnecessary questions, enforce some mechanisms:

• "Customer phone call support now cost $100 per call."
• Still getting unnecessary calls? Increase the price until you're satisfied.
• Those customers will start consulting your manual/website to save bucks.

You soon start cutting down on unwanted customer behavior that stagnates your company.

The idea works for any other customer interaction you want to avoid.

Are window shoppers overburdening you?

• "We now charge $X for the initial consultation."

Are you going on unproductive meetings?

• "We now charge $X for a face-to-face meeting."

Are you constantly revising customer projects?

• "We now charge $X for 1-hour in revisions."

Play with $X until satisfied.

BAM.

The steps:

1. Identify the behavior to rid.
2. Attach $ to the behavior.
3. Increase $ until fully-satisfied.

You start cutting costs, increasing morale, and ensuring your team works on the most productive tasks for your customers.

Financial mechanisms.

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