Make Your Site Relevant to Everyone Involved – Employees and Customers Alike
People create nearly 252,000 new websites every single day, and the internet is exploding with new content every minute.
Although this may be exciting for consumers, it poses a unique challenge for businesses – especially locally oriented laundromats.
Remaining relevant in a time when fads and trends have shorter lifespans than the average pair of socks can be difficult. Couple that with today’s fast-paced, employee-oriented economy, and it’s easy to feel constantly behind. The problems you face on a daily basis trying to create a positive experience for both customers and employees cannot be understated.
Thankfully, there are a few ways to make your website relevant and informative for everyone involved with your business – employees and customers alike. You may be surprised how many pain points this way of thinking can solve.
Making your website user-friendly is more valuable than you may imagine, especially when you include information for employees to easily share with customers. If you’re interested in how an employee-oriented view of your website works out, keep reading…
You Need a ‘Source of Truth’
When a customer has a question or concern, can your employees direct them to a “source of truth” for further information and explanation? If not, you’re expecting your employees to memorize everything about your company and its logistics. While that may be a good goal to shoot for, it’s also a bit unrealistic.
Although most laundromats have only a few employees, it’s crucial for everyone to be on the same page and to have the same knowledge about changes in policy, materials, products, services and other essential information. This is inclusive of your customers and your employees.
A sustainable method for all businesses is to have this kind of information on the website and available for employees to use at their disposal to assist customers. The more information you share, the better your business will operate.
So, what can laundromats do about this to help their employees?
To help you start figuring out what kinds of information to include, here are some ideas of what you can include on your website to aid customer support and improve the experience:
- Information about your location(s)
- Current rewards programs for which customers can sign up
- Prices, payment options and safely accessible ATMs nearby
- Details on the equipment and laundry products in the store
- Extra services available – such as pickup and delivery, wash-dry-fold, and drop-off drycleaning
- Various amenities in the laundromat for singles and families – including Wi-Fi access, charging stations, a children’s reading and learning area, vending options and so on
One of the easiest ways to improve your website’s usefulness is to ask your employees how it can improve. If you allow them to provide viable feedback and recommendations, your attendants will use the website more often, because they’ll feel a sense of ownership of the content.
Since you can’t talk with everyone who walks through the door, receiving feedback from your employees is the next best way to receive recommendations from your customers. Although you can’t possibly grant every request, it’s helpful to know what customers look for when visiting your laundromat. Of course, when you can implement some of the recommendations you receive, share the news on your website and social media – after all, it’s all good content.
Eliminate Disruptions
Over the last several decades, we all have become less patient. Although the saying “patience is a virtue” still rings true in many cases, we sometimes find ourselves growing more impatient as technology improves. Whether customers are in a restaurant, a retail store or a laundromat, they don’t like to wait for extended periods.
Imagine a situation where an employee is answering several questions from multiple customers in line. This “live Q&A” may take just a few moments, but customers begin to get frustrated after this short amount of time. Instead of hiring more staffers or answering questions faster, you can solve most of these problems with a website that gets the job done.
You also can think about it like this: when employees are busy answering questions all day, what aren’t they doing? They’re not cleaning, organizing, fixing equipment or anything else you need them to do to keep the store running smoothly. So, it would help if you found ways to answer the questions people have without disrupting an employee’s workflow.
This process is rather simple for laundromats. Here’s what to include on your website to help your employees avoid disruptions and distractions:
- Videos and diagrams explaining how to use every piece of equipment in the laundromat
- Payment method options
- Store hours
- Store locations
- Various services available
Including this information on your website will help customers answer their own questions – before asking one of your employees.
But how will customers know the information is on your site? Publicizing the website in your laundry is a great start, but you also can build your marketing campaigns to drive traffic to your site. Familiarity with your store – before a customer arrives – only helps speed up the wash process!
Drive Online Engagement with In-Person Touches
At this point, I hope you see the potential for an “information engagement” snowball. Additional exposure on your website helps your employees know what’s new in-store and enables them to share exciting information with customers. Once customers understand the website is reliable, they’ll turn to it first, before disrupting your employees mid-task. It’s a win-win.
In other words, this mindset establishes a way for any business to bridge the online/offline gap that many of us experience, and you’ll likely be happy with the results. If you hang posters around your laundry with QR codes and URLs, more customers will opt to visit your website, because they can do so using their phones. They don’t have to bother an employee if information is just a few taps away.
Whether it’s because of social anxiety or a limited amount of time, if customers can easily find the answers they need, they’re more likely to continue visiting your store. It’s a trust-building element that reinforces your laundromat as a helpful brand. This additional benefit helps your employees address other pressing issues, such as malfunctioning equipment, spills and other urgent needs – and may even make customers more pleasant to deal with down the line.
In a roundabout way, a website helps your employees the most when customers can find all of the information they need on your website and, in turn, avoid interrupting your staff members.
Make Your Employees’ Lives Easier
Building a sustainable website for your team requires a lot of initial effort. However, once the site is complete, it can really pay off. Although the information you put on your website can help customers before they walk through your door, that same information should help employees as well.
When you design your website with your employees in mind, you consider things from a new perspective. You hire employees to do a specific job, but it’s easy to get sidetracked when working with people.
Use your website to answer customer questions so that your employees have an opportunity to share this information with customers – thus, saving themselves the time it would take to answer the same question over and over.
