Price Match

I had a good one today. A customer asked if we “price match” our competition. Quite frankly, I didn’t think we had but 3 or 4 good competitors. Come to find out the competitor was one of the good ones. I checked out his pricing for the same system we were selling and he was indeed $50 less. First of all I had to ask myself, does anyone really believe that we mark these things up $50?! I mean, look at the prices.

So I had to investigate. I had to use my anonymous email account to contact them which I’ve done in the past with satisfying results but still, things change. Anyway, it turns out there is no brine grid with this system or no safety overflow assembly. It was also lacking a few other things. I added them up and they nearly came to $50 so I guess I can’t match that price. The decision was made years ago that we were not going to short our customers the extras that add value to the product.

A New Web Site

We’re working on a new web site right now. I’d post the URL but there’s really nothing there just yet. This one will also be a water treatment equipment site but it will focus more on single products and the customer’s relation to them than the current one. It will feature less talk and more “show”. In other words, less words. It will be mostly pictures and even video which demonstrates the product rather than describe it. The theory is that if someone types “reverse osmosis filter” into a search box, they are looking for a “reverse osmosis filter” not a sales pitch.

There’s a short article on a customer’s experience with a water quality problem he had. Some of his equipment was purchased from us but he still had rust coming out of his bathroom faucets while the rest of the house was fine. Instead of blaming the equipment, he thought it through and came up with a clever solution. Read about it on Water Value’s home blog. Very refreshing.

Phone Idea

I had an idea today. We have 4 dedicated phone lines here with at least 2 operators. There are times when people can’t get through yet they do not want to leave a message. I have been reading about these fax services that you pay a monthly fee to and they accept your faxes and send them to you in email format. If I could free up the fax line, we could have up to 4 operators answering phones all at the same time. That would almost guarantee getting through the first time.

Now, can anyone recommend a reliable email fax service? I don’t want e-fax because I know someone that had them and had a hard time terminating the service. Read more about this at our home blog.

Blog Is Finally Home

Yes, I’ve moved the blog yet again. I truly like the WordPress site and of course the reliability makes all that much better, but because I recently found out I could put the blog on my own server well, that’s pretty tempting. I did not need to think about it for very long.

My server goes down twice per year for about 8 hours. That is until last year. Last year it did not fail at all so that’s a much better track record than blogger or whatever they call themselves. And while I have not had the blog hosted long enough on this site to know if it’s reliable or not, I’m pretty certain it is because the blog software I installed on the company server was developed by WordPress! It’s got to be good.

Anyway, check out the new blog at www.watervalue.com/blog/ and let me know what you think. I’ve already had several positive comments on the style of the thing. It’s just what we’ve been looking for the past few years!

Information Locations

Roughly 30% of the time, one of our customers upon receiving a large water treatment system such as a softener or filter system, will call or write with questions pertaining to assembly and settings. Less frequently but still an issue is when customers call suprised and disappointed that there is actually “some assembly required” with our systems. Sure, we post all over the web site that the media tanks arrive unloaded and that the media will need to be poured in, otherwise the delivery driver would not be able to lift these things. But when I put myself in the shoes of these customers who did not find our installation instructions and had no idea these water treatment systems, while complete, are not completely assembled, I can just imagine their frustration. And even though this warning is published in the FAQs and elsewhere, I felt we should plaster it right next to the “Add To Cart” button so there’s no way anyone would miss it.

And while we’re at the task of  updating links on the web site, why not include with those links detailed setup and installation instructions as well. Because most of the service manuals that come with these systems are quite complete, we could consider our instructions more like an enhancement or experienced advice. That way, a potential customer will notice the link (let’s call it “installation and setup instructions”), click on it and know without a doubt what to expect out of their choice of products. While I’ve noticed some of our competitors publishing installation instructions, they do not go into much detail on the setup, programming and pre-assembly as this new idea of ours does.

So check out this weeks Water Weekly for some examples of what we’ve been working on for our potential customers. It’s our goal to insure that our customers are the best informed of all.