Lowest Price Guarantee

EGP Business Solutions expands value proposition with addition of: Lowest Price Guarantee

EGP Business Solutions a national leader in consumer confidence business and office solutions today announced the addition of a Lowest Price Guarantee to its available bundle of benefits. Our bonding solution (backed by buySAFE) provides shoppers an optional selection to include a bond guarantee for added piece of mind. (Option is offered during the purchase check out process.)

With the addition of the Lowest Price Guarantee, shoppers now have a 3-in-1 Bond Guarantee that includes all of the following features:

3-in-1 Bond Guarantee

1. $25,000 Purchase Guarantee – a third party guarantee of all the purchase terms of sale

2. $10,000 ID Theft Protection – comprehensive identity theft coverage

3. $100 Lowest Price Guarantee – if the store price drops within 30 days of a purchase, the difference is paid to the consumer

 

After finding the right product at the right price, shoppers traditionally ask themselves three key questions:

1. Is this merchant reliable and will they perform as promised?

2. Will my personal information be secure and remain private?

3. Am I getting the best deal?

 

Our buySAFE 3-in-1 Bond Guarantee answers all of these questions providing shoppers with increased confidence and greater peace of mind when making their purchase decisions.

 

Adding these benefits to our existing policy of “every order 100% guaranteed no matter what” ensures that we can be your business solution.

Accounting Made Simple

The fantasy of entrepreneurship is a popular day dream for many people. Things become a bit overwhelming when it comes to sorting out the mundane functions of making the dream reality. There are many great websites filled with information on getting started with marketing efforts, building your brand, customer service, and social media usage. In the excitement of gathering together this wealth of information entrepreneurs tend to overlook one particular facet of the business start up – accounting!

For those that possess a healthy start up fund, company accounting may be a simple task of hiring an accountant to handle financial details. The reality for the company start up with minimal funding can be a bit more daunting. It takes a very special kind of personality to find accounting an exciting endeavor. Most budding entrepreneurs would prefer to focus on marketing and customer interaction, so when the process of selecting an accounting system starts the headaches sometime begin.

With everything trending toward digital, the natural impulse is to head to the software aisle at the office store. However, the not so technically inclined may find this journey both confusing and costly. An option outside of the technical realm is a product line made popular with business professionals over the past 50 years – the One-Write Check System.

A bit more “old school” in styling, this system is simple, efficient, and cost effective. For a true company start up with no system in place, consider purchasing a Starter Kit that contains all of the necessary ingredients for your basic accounting needs. Starter Kits traditionally include a folding board (aka: peg board), journal sheets, company imprinted checks, and coordinating envelopes. These elements together allow you to write a company check while simultaneously logging the check on the journal sheet. This process keeps your accounting records tidy and updated. In place of hand addressing or warming up your printer, coordinating envelopes allow you to simply insert the check and add postage.

True to its name, the folding board folds together to keep the paper elements (journal sheets and checks) in place and protected for safe storage and/or easy transit. Customized elements and kits are available to ensure your selected system meets the specific needs of your company. As business begins to boom, you can elect to continue use of this system for your accounting needs or upgrade to an accounting software system. Companies requiring “on the run” check writing can utilize both the One-Write Check System and selected accounting software enable them to meet their day to day business needs while still maintaining clean account records.

Is the Customer Still Always Right?

For the past several years, people have been barraged with messages about the economic downturn its toll on large and small businesses. Companies find themselves forced to cut back on everything from staff to office supplies just to stay open for business. Combined with the onslaught of information and heartbreaking stories of countrywide layoffs, most people are justifiably nervous – if not just plain old stressed out! As the business world decisions begin to impact employees lives, people worry about their next paycheck become understandably distracted by personal concerns. What is the final product of all this stress? Sometimes it leads to a less than perfect experience for customers.

After considering the immense everyday stress of business owners and employees, it might be easy to believe that the mediocre customer experience you had with the telephone company was caused by the increased pressures of the business world. People are, after all, only human, right? True, but...

In spite of all these possible explanations for bad customer service, delivering it to your customers could be the thing that puts your company in the red. As both companies and people look to cut expenses, they tend to search for only for the “best deal” and forget that sometimes “you get what you pay for”. The modern customer expects the best price delivered with excellent customer service. Ignoring this new reality is akin to business suicide.

Armed with this knowledge I took on the task of deciding how best to “beef up” our customer service while wearing multiple hats at the office. After reading a stack of articles discussing everything from trends to attitudes, here is what I boiled it down to.

Smile! We all know that interactions with customers should be delivered with a smile – even when they are via telephone – but also consider applying this to your coworkers. If I allow myself to wallow in the stress of the workday and justify snapping at my coworkers because “they should understand”, it is very likely that this same attitude will filter into the next conversation I have with a customer. In the end, we are all human and in spite of our best efforts to “put on a happy face” it’s difficult to make the mark if you are trying to go from grumpy to thrilled in 0 to 60 seconds!

Refrain from assumptions about your customer’s intelligence level. I am quite certain that everyone has at least one story of customer interaction that left you wondering about a few things. As tempting as it is to simply assume a person is on the lower end of the intelligence spectrum take a few minutes to breath because your assumption is most likely wrong. During a recent training class the instructor was speaking to this point and suggested that whenever someone’s behavior frustrates or upsets you try to think of 7 reasons that could have caused their behavior. If you can’t come up with 7 then, by all means, relegate them to the “no diving” end of the intelligence pool. However, odds are that you can come up with a few reasons and this alone should help keep you - and your customers - smiling.

Keep it personal. With the popularity of the Social Media realm and digital marketing, customers receive a constant avalanche of information. Most information currently circulated talks about keeping up with trends, interacting with customers at places they like to visit (Facebook, Twitter, etc.), and keeping your message content relevant to customer interests.

While I agree with the above points whole-heartedly, I think the most important suggestion is that of personalization. On a purely human level, ask yourself if you are more likely to read a message directed at you and specific to your needs/interests, or listen to one that is fun to look at with content that is only partially relevant to you? Please correct me if I am wrong, but I suspect most people would be more inclined to give their attention to the personalized message and, hopefully, that offers the sender much better ROI.

So, back to the initial question – is the customer still always right?

I think – Yes! If you consider the volume of purchasing options made available between traditional brick and mortar along with the bevy of ecommerce sites, the option pool for consumers has only gotten larger. Combine the increased options with the need to be budget conscious and customers are now on the hunt for the “perfect experience” – low cost AND great customer service. Unique products will attract a customer’s initial attention (and purchase), but without great customer service you may never see them again and this is quite certain to take a toll on your bottom line.

Please share your thoughts by adding a comment below!

Check 21

Congress passed HR 1474, otherwise known as the “Check 21 Act". President George Bush signed this bill into law on October 28, 2003. HR 1474, now Public Law #108-100, will permit electronic checks to legally substitute their original paper copies in order to expedite processing. Rather than waiting for a check to be physically transported to the original institution and back, the information would be transmitted electronically. This is a change from previous check policies.

Previous check policies required banks by law to physically transmit original paper checks between financial institutions for processing. This snail mail solution resulted in what was referred to as a "float" period for checks. Check 21 resolved this issue for consumers, recipients, and banks and allows for almost immediate fund transfer as compared to the slow and cumbersome system of the past.

Certain financial institutions, which have formed independent agreements to mutually recognize electronic checks, have implemented this technology successfully. Congress recognizes the demand for wider implementation of this practice and has passed HR 1474 to grant substitute checks legal status as long as the digital image fits applicable standards. Magnetic ink in the MICR code line of checks enables ICR machines to capture check information and convert it into an electronic file for transmission.

HR 1474 was a result of consultations between the American National Standards Institute and congressional staff on the reliability and utility of electronic check standards. According to David Karmol, VP for Public Policy at the American National Standards Institute, “This legislation provides a great example of what can be accomplished when ANSI works in partnership with its accredited standards developers and supplies the appropriate information to those in government.”

Some people are concerned about the issue of the electronic image of the check being a valid tender, but to those concerned people I would note that even the Federal Reserve has jumped on the bandwagon. The Fed's implementation of X9.37, Specifications for Electronic Check Exchange, will allow the agency to exploit Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR), a technology that involves the addition of black magnetic fibers into the ink of MICR code lines. Banks rely heavily on magnetic ink data to credit, sort and pay billions of checks annually. The development and implementation of a single standard MICR data format helps to reduce the cost and complexity of the nation's paper-based payment system because MICR detail would be transmitted electronically without moving paper checks. The cooperative relationship of the public and private sector in "electrifying" the check is an excellent example of the benefits to industry and consumers of government reliance on voluntary consensus standards.

Full implementation of the new check processing system is now in place.