A mentor of mine used to say “don’t run your business at the expense of your customer”. In other words, your big idea to make things more efficient could be perceived as a big pain in the neck by your customer. When was the last time a real person answered the phone when you called “customer service”. Sometimes inefficiencies can even pay off if your customer values the effort.
My favorite fried chicken place is a great example of this. Bush’s Chicken in Hewitt, Texas has no less than three drive through lanes. Two for food and one just for drinks. They accomplish this by employing an army of high school students who literally run in and out of the side door of the building like ants. “Have you been helped yet, have you been helped yet?” They ask as they go from car to car. Starting from the first car they see, insuring no one is left unattended. The lines of cars continue to move as the ants keep bringing food, drink and change. Rarely do you actually make it to the window before you are ready to go. My perception…I never have to wait!
This can’t be efficient from a cost perspective. Or is it? Ask the Churches Chicken that attempted to make a go of it across the street. It’s now a great place to get tacos!
But I digress. So what does all of this have to do with e-mailing invoices. Does e-mailing invoices appeal to you? Does it appeal to your customer?
In a recent USA TODAY Snapshot, the headline read “Customers prefer to get financial info in the mail.” When asked…Do you prefer to receive bills, bank statements and other financial reports at home by regular mail or by e-mail? The answer was a resounding Snail Mail!
I was surprised…no, shocked. Not that I didn’t agree. I insist on paper statements and paper bills myself even though I work with technology every day. I was amazed that that much of the world agreed with me!
My issue with emailing invoices to customers in a business to business relationship is this…the vendors that email me usually get paid late…because I don’t pay the bills and I usually don’t even open the emails (out of the hundred or so I get a day) much less forward it to Caterina who does pay the bills. I am doing good just to get to emails from customers who need something from me…everything else comes second. So it becomes one more thing for me to do. And none of these vendors…not one…asked if it would be ok to invoice me by email or even bother to ask who to send it to. And…the last straw…when I ask them to send it to the appropriate person…they still keep coming to me.
As a business owner, I have to ask myself, if I start broadband emailing my customers invoices, how will it change the way they think about our company. I know what I think about the email invoices I have to deal with. And what is the hidden cost of that bad feeling? A lost sale? Late payments? A feeling that we don’t care how it affects you as long as we save the postage?
Bottom line, I really like the idea of sending them, it would be so much more efficient, right?…but I don’t because how I feel about getting them.
So what do you think? Take our poll and tell us how you feel about sending email invoices to your customers and how do you like receiving them from vendors in your business. I will be interested to see the results.
