Impact of Power Guarantee

Marketers are always on a hunt. A hunt for a new account or a re-kill (repeat selling) to an existing account. But why would a buyer keep buying from you? What baits have you put in place to ensure loyalty of your buyers? No matter how well you court a prospective buyer, there’s really only one thing that they want, and that is a compelling Power Guarantee that the benefits of their purchase would outweigh their costs.

A service guarantee is a promise that a service or product will meet certain consumer expectations or standards. If the product fails to perform as promised, the seller may offer replacement, refund, or extended warranty. The purpose of it is to instill consumer confidence.

The basic expectation of a buyer after making a purchase is avoiding regret. And as a marketer, it is your job to convince a buyer without an iota of doubt to uphold your promise if things go wrong. That’s the Power Guarantee which makes buyers take a leap of faith. Guarantees, if thoughtfully offered for a well-endowed service or a product go a long way in making buyer loosen their purse strings!

Marketing virtuoso in doctor’s garb

As peculiar as it may sound, guarantees work well even in sensitive, life-altering sectors like hospitals and healthcare.

I have a friend, Dr. Kumar (name changed) a famed orthopedician based in New Delhi. He pulled out a rabbit-out-of-a-hat moment by his smart e-mailer campaign recently that harnesses power of service guarantee. See below…

A power guarantee forces everything that happens before a customer gets her product to be just right. Like in Dr. Kumar’s instance, it placed demands on Dr. Kumar to source high quality implants at low cost, on clinic’s administration to ensure there is no lag in wheeling patients to the OR, on his marketing team to boost USPs to as wide an audience as possible, and of course on his core clinical team to ensure procedure is performed un-eventfully. Everything from beginning to end had to be a tight ship. Like a well-oiled, tailored and distinctive value chain.

Power Guarantees are rare as hen’s teeth. Why? Because making a guarantee this bold terrifies everyone in the company. If it doesn’t make your stomach churn, it’s probably not an awesome guarantee. Think about it for a minute: When a patient buys a knee replacement from Dr. Kumar, somebody is taking a risk. When you buy a Rs. 25 lakh luxury hatchback, someone is taking the risk. When somebody buys a Rs. 5000 wall painting, somebody is taking the risk. The question is: Who is taking the risk? And… If YOU as a seller/ service provider won’t take the risk, why should your customer?

Playing safe with Power Guarantee

There is a way to mitigate risk in your service guarantees… by adding some CAVEATS. Your appetite to take risk and for Power Guarantee to hold good depends on how well the caveats are laid out and informed to buyer before sale. In a way it is a process of disqualifying a misfit customer from availing a Power Guarantee. That’s mitigating your risk

Like in Dr. Kumar’s case, the caveats were cap on patient’s age, past history of diabetes and hypertension etc.; patient’s willingness to follow instructions before and after you perform the surgery; adherence to instructions given by clinical staff, etc. All these conditions need to be laid out clearly and in black and white.

Some may say that this is adding a lot of conditions to a guarantee. But then unless a buyer holds up to his share of bargain for claiming a guarantee, a seller would not be able to make a guarantee in the first place.

The power of unconditional service guarantees pushes people over the hump and moves them from “Hmm… I’ll think about it” to “Wow…, I’ll go for it.”

So do you have nerves to test your product or service with a Power Guarantee?!

Hey, Thanks for making it this far! You know what, I would love to hear from you. If you’ve got a question or an opinion on this post, please leave your comments. I promise to read and respond back.

And by the way, a rap on knuckles or a gratifying praise are welcome from you!