Give a little... to get a lot

Take our suburban shopping centres for example. Each and every one of them now boasts a squadron of car guards to make sure your wheels don't get swiped. Most South African consumers have got used to it and have resigned themselves to having a packet of R2 coins available to avoid that embarrassing business of explaining to the guards that "I don't have any change right now." What gives me a lot of faith in this country, by the way, is that very few of them take exception. The guards usually just smile and wave you on your way. Great customer service.

But how much would it cost for shop owners to pick up the tab? No, I don't mean all getting together and agreeing to pay salaries to the guards. I mean hand each and every customer a R2 coin.

Ok, I know I'm going to get shot down in flames by everyone telling me that customers will end up with R20 in cash having gone to ten shops and only paying a guard once. Fine, so work on a date stamped coupon system or something - the point is, with a bit of creative thinking, one can really surprise one's customers with very little effort and cost.

I tried this once when I was working at BMW South Africa. We wanted to do something to make BMW owners feel we really did appreciate their custom.
In the days when you still paid parking fees to those guys at the exit point from the parking garages, we printed thousands of cards and a week before Christmas we started a promotion involving the cashier at the parking garage exit giving each BMW owner a card when they pulled up to pay. It read: "A Christmas gift from BMW South Africa - we've paid for your parking, thanks for your custom - season's greetings to you and your family."

The entire promotion cost a meagre R15000 despite the huge volume of traffic at that time of the year. From the telephone calls, letters, faxes and emails we got, you'd swear we'd given them all a brand new car.