There are circumstances in which adding value to the customer costs you nothing. Yes, absolutely nothing, zero cost! But you must be alert to detect those opportunities to increase the satisfaction of your customers.
This little lamp caught me today, and it occurred to me that it was positive to share it, since it is an interesting tip to take into account.
I went to print some labels at a printing company. I had my file with the image of the label. The girl who attended me had to replicate that image to cover the size of the sheet that I had to print. Upon handing me the finished work, before returning the pen drive, she asked me if I did not want to take the file that she had generated with the image replicated on the entire sheet. So I came out with my labels plus the ready-to-print file.
What has this meant to me? That the next time I have to do that printing I will not have to wait about 10 minutes until they prepare the file to print, nor will we have to test in which position the paper is optimized, and if I want to go to another printing company or request the job by email, I do it directly with that file, with no possibility of error.
And for her, what did it imply? Instead of deleting the file from her machine, she cut and pasted it on my pen drive. That is, zero cost! And I would even say, a saving, since if I am going to make the same impression again, it will save the 10 minutes of work that it took to do it the first time. In other words, she transformed the sunk cost of a job she had to do, into value for her client, and for herself.
As a conclusion of this experience, it seems to me that it is very appropriate to pay attention to detect those works carried out in the company that, beyond what were necessary for the usual operations, can serve, at no additional cost (or at a very low cost) as value for our customers.
I think about the information that is generated for the usual management. For example, don't you think it would be useful for a client to receive at the end of the year a summary of all their consumption in your company, broken down by category and by month? If you keep each account of your clients and you already have that information, it would not cost you anything to do so.
So my recommendation is that you be attentive so that all your efforts can add value to customers, even if their initial objective has been different.
