Improve your Brand Performance by Simply Studying the Publix Model

Yesterday I made my typical visit to the grocery store, not a full-fledged shop but rather the usual, "run out and just grab a few things" type of visit. As I was there, however, I observed a few things and I could not help but start compiling the thoughts and applying those observations to the business world at large. Let's talk about one in particular.

Specifically, every time you check out at Publix they ask if you need any help getting your groceries to the car. They ask this every time to every person. They don't attempt to determine who might need help based on appearances. I have never accepted the help, however, I do appreciate being asked. In fact, over time it has trained me to consider this offer to be normal, and therefore when I shop anywhere else, and the gesture is not offered, even though I would not accept it if it was, and even if I am buying small items that I can carry in one hand, I feel cheated because I was not asked. This is an excellent example of how consistent simple practices not only build the brand, they start to differentiate the brand from any competition.

One of the complaints I hear all the time from some of the companies I advise has to do with the difficulty of competing in the market. That said, many of us don't look at what it means to compete holistically. We focus on pricing, sales, and marketing and we forget to ask the question, "what are we consistently offering customers that differentiate us and demonstrates that we care about them? What are we doing to make the experience easier?" Maybe those questions should be answered first!

Of course, the financially focused advisors are going to point out that doing something like this costs money, and not every business can afford to offer something that they feel has no hard ROI to justify the spend. So once again let us consider Publix. I am sure that at some point in their history, a thrift minded employee asked if they really needed to do this, perhaps a cost analysis was conducted to calculate the extra clerks needed to provide this service and no doubt when they applied those savings across all of the stores the savings must have been huge! But the service continued, why?

The clerk that helps the customer to their car satisfies that customer immensely, but they also satisfy many others at the same time. First, we get to observe them helping people, often those in need, to get their groceries loaded into their cars, secondly on the way back into the store the clerks usually collect any loose shopping carts from the parking lot, which means your car is less likely to get dinged, it means you can find a spot easier and it means they always have carts ready as customers arrive. How is that an expense and not an efficiency? Remember that Bean Counters always need guidance when diagnosing the true cost of anything, they need to step out of the vacuum that is Microsoft excel and consider all the other factors. Without help, their analysis will always be faulty.

So how do we apply this lesson to other segments and businesses? Here is the ever so simple formula:

1. Something very simple that can be repeated with every customer consistently.
2. Something that customers want and appreciate, even if they do not take advantage of.
3. Something that creates other efficiencies and brand value opportunities as it is executed

There are plenty of people that are focused on complicated and elaborate ways to build CLV and Net Promoter scores. There are new technologies and services being launched every day that promise to transform the business. If you want to, you can spend millions of dollars attempting to improve your brand rating by just .0002 points. But before trying any of those maybe we could start with these simple fundamentals and see what happens.