Finding Creative Ways to Make Customer Service Your Priority

Many of you have taken the last couple of years to diversify your businesses, re-train your teams and to freshen your inventories, all ways of staying on top and regrouping for an economic recovery. 

We’ve also identified that finding creative solutions to servicing our customers is not just a luxury, but a necessity.  Clients are expecting more from you from the first phone call through implementation.  They are looking for a true partner for their events and hold their vendors to the same level of accountability that they are being held.

I want to share with you a great example of reinvesting in customer service.  My friends at PROM EM in Arizona recently opened a Design Center, in an affluent Scottsdale neighborhood.  PRO EM offers a variety of event services, including event rentals, which is the focus of this new design center. 

They’ve taken the time over the last year or so to identify a need in their market and to create a way to service both their existing client base and open up new opportunities. Many companies across the country have similar offerings. I give you PRO EM’s Design Center as a case study in fulfilling many customer service concerns with one concept.

Great examples of how this concept provides a new level of customer service:

1. Convenience – Most rental companies find themselves in far-off, warehouse neighborhoods, as is the case with PRO EM. By locating a design center in the heart of the Scottsdale event community, they’ve made it more convenient for their clients to see, touch and feel the product.
2. Product Inspiration – The design center showcases its products in a way that a catalog cannot inspire you. There are featured tables with PRO EM products and Wildflower Linen designs, that are meant to jump-start the client’s creativity. And, then through the planning/design process, the client can design their own tabletop to ensure that the look is just how they want it.
3. Equal Rights – Though top planners have demanded to see table samples for years now, the idea of a design center allows all levels of planners, including “do-it-yourselfers” to be a part of the creative process.
4. Breathe of Fresh Air – As planners continue to be held more accountable, they are working hard to breathe new life into their long-standing events. The design center is intended to be a backdrop for innovation for these customers.
5. Meeting Space – Planners, who often find themselves meeting at coffee shops and restaurants, are invited to host meetings with their clients in the design center space. Brilliant. They can show off their own creativity to their client, have a comfortable place to meet and PRO EM is showing off their latest inventory.
6. Personalized Experience – “Cookie Cutter” events are a thing of the past and this kind of facility allows a personalization of each client’s experience.
7. Bonus!  New Customers – PRO EM has seen a surge in their wedding business since opening the design center. Weddings tend to be such a design-centric event that it is no wonder that wedding planners and brides alike would love this concept of hands-on design.

Meredith McIlmoyle, Publisher

Email me at meredith@event-solutions.com.

Meredith McIlmoyle, publisher of Event Solutions, has been in the event industry for 20 years and has a background in entertainment, production, rentals, festivals and corporate and social event planning.