How B2B Brands Win Trust and Earn Loyalty
In this episode of the Everybody Brands podcast, we’re talking with Merrell Sheehan, the Vice President of Marketing, and Cole Godsey, Marketing Manager at Electronic Merchant Systems about how a B2B brand wins trust and earns customer loyalty through exemplary customer service and transparency (with a technique many businesses can do).
Brian: EMS is committed to empowering merchants to increase their financial well-being. What does that mean?
Merrell: It’s by offering fair processing rates, exemplary customer service, and providing products and solutions that address the rapidly changing marketplace that are a fit for small to midsize businesses. Everyone claims to have the best customer service. EMS makes an effort to quantify our customer service success by pointing out close to 1000 Customer Reviews on Google.
EMS sales teams takes a consultative approach and introduces prospects to new ways to take payments that create efficiencies and savings. You know, sure we have credit card machines, everybody knows about them, we can provide them to merchants that are comfortable with a terminal solution. But we go well above and beyond that, you know, let me give you an example of how we can consult on a specific product. We have a product called EMS mobile that works with existing mobile devices. But it also adds a lot of back-office efficiencies like email invoicing, recurring payments, whole array of reporting that's a great fit for the merchants that we service versus just saying, “Hey, here's our terminal.”
Cole: For EMS, customer support is a key differentiator and one of the pain points I feel for our merchants in the industry is that sometimes it's more a, “you guys figure it out. go on our website, read these faqs; we have these tutorials.” EMS support is 24/7/365, you will always pick up a phone and reach someone. More importantly, everyone is based out of our Cleveland office. You're not calling internationally you are literally talking to someone who is locally based in Cleveland, Ohio.
A few weeks ago, someone was trying to sign up with our Total Touch POS system. We were reviewing their merchant statement and discovered the merchant had an $825 servicing fee —where it really didn't explain why on earth it was — it was just the processor charging the merchant an extra $825 because they could. One of the big things for EMS is that we don't like to nickel and dime our merchants. There are no hidden processing fees. We are very transparent with our rates and pricing and our goal is to help small businesses increase their financial well-being. We're not here to make their lives more difficult; we're here to make operating their business significantly smoother.
A B2B brand should not make their customer’s lives more difficult; a B2B brand should make operating a business significantly smoother.
Brian: One of the things my wife and I have frequently discussed over the past few weeks is that we’ve noticed a decrease in customer care and customer service, whether it's COVID fatigue, or people tired from working from home. It feels like they’re taking it out on the customers. The way you phrase EMS’ commitment to customer success and financial well-being places the emphasis on the merchant and their success. That's how you invite people into that relationship with you as a company and as a brand.
Merrell, you mentioned Google reviews. What are the qualities that you find signify a loyal EMS customer or client?
Merrell: We believe a loyal customer is one that has longevity with us and has left us a review. These two concepts go hand in hand. After every transaction or interaction our customer service team has with a customer that results in closing the issue, we ask that they leave us a review on Google or the BBB. We put our money where our mouth is instead of sending out a survey that only we see. We put the customer response out for anyone to see and we thank all customers for their reviews and re-engage with customers that leave us a less than stellar review to correct any issues that might be outstanding. A loyal customer is demonstrated by longevity of being with EMS and leaving us a review. Both help Electronic Merchant Systems.
Brian: Transparency in pricing, transparency in processes — all lead to elements of trust — winning that trust for new customers but also supporting the trust from your existing customers. Transparency is a secret brand attribute that people don't understand and don't use to their advantage because you when you have nothing to hide, you really don't have anything to prove.
Merrell: There's value in that conversation out there that's visible to anybody. We used to do surveys — 'm talking 7-10 years ago — everybody wanted to survey our customers, but we're the only ones that see that information. How we reacted to it or not wasn't really clear at times, but now we'll just put it out and let everybody see the response and it gives us the same results but better value.
How do you use Google reviews in the marketing work you do?
Cole: Because we have great customer service, why don't we actually show some of the reviews that articulate that? One of the big things we do is we put the reviews on our corporate site, because it's one of the first impressions we want to leave with a merchant. We want them to see the actual proof from real merchants. These reviews aren't fabricated, they're not. Reviews help to reiterate our messaging of how we care about our merchants.
Brian: From reading the reviews, it sounds like the merchants are specific about the solution that they're working with. Thinking about these solutions, how do you get prospective customers to think of a solution as a business growth solution or a management solution, not simply a transactional software package?
Merrell: It’s twofold. We do a lot of training with our sales team so that they can come in with that consultative approach. We also stress some of those transformational items (going back to EMS mobile). Sure, it's great to be able to take a transaction on your phone when you're on site. But the real transformational items are things like the email invoice you can send your client. You could wait and send them out an invoice that they pay at their leisure and avoid printing out an invoice, putting a stamp on an envelope, and depending on the US Postal Service. There's an inherent time delay there. You mentioned recurring payments. If somebody has a selling model with a monthly fee that's being charged, that's very easy to set and forget that system, and not have to run that transaction, once a month, over and over again. We do market the features beyond the transaction as well as training our sales team to do so.
Brian: Merrell, you mentioned going beyond features and benefits to selling what is transformational for the merchant. With EMS’ goal of empowering merchants and helping them grow their business, what kind of language do you use around the idea of transformation? How does EMS message transformation?
Cole: One of the biggest things that we do is use messaging that our solutions will help their business in a growing and changing economy. Because obviously with COVID, and everything that has gone on over the last year, things are extremely different for business owners. We use this wording and language in our marketing materials. To go back to what Merrill said, our messaging is more consultative; we're here to help you grow. We're not here to just sell you the solution with a one size fits all kind of mentality.
EMS takes the time to learn the merchant’s business, we use messaging to emphasize and say we understand that “your business isn't like the other business next door to you.” We’re here to help businesses grow along the way.
Brian: That makes me think about the difference between selling and telling. Selling vs. telling is the difference between trying to create a transaction, versus telling people about how this can help their business grow and make their life better.
Cole: it gives them peace of mind, honestly. A small business owner has a lot going on, especially if it's just one person running the show. It's one less thing on their plate they need to worry about. And that's what we're here for. It's to make a small business owner’s life easier, not more difficult.
Brian: I want to get to the question that I ask of every guest.
From your perspective, what are the distinctions between brand or branding (the process of brand and discipline of brand) and marketing?
Merrell: As far as product and services rollouts, EMS likes to spend as much time on branding as we can, but sometimes internal pressures say, “we need customers.” There does have to be some branding in place before marketing fully kicks off. But branding, I believe, continually evolves as company warts get exposed.
EMS has been around for 32 years. I believe there's many things that that are part of our culture that conflict with our branding. For example, our company name is Electronic Merchant Systems. For years employees have embraced calling ourselves EMS. Try to search “EMS,” on Google and you're going to find every emergency medical service in the book, and we even get requests to include EMS on marketing materials.
People get very upset when you tell them no, that's not our brand, we have to use Electronic Merchant Systems. When it comes to marketing, we do like to get as much (branding) in place as we can, but there's always those pressures to bring in leads and referrals.
It's an interesting process, marketing and branding and branding never ends.
Cole: I’ve always thought not only just for EMS, but marketing in general and branding and marketing going hand in hand. I look at branding is the bones that marketing can be built upon. If you don't have a clear brand identity of who you are, or messaging around who you are, you could have the best marketing possible but it's just going fall on deaf ears.
It's more of that core: who you are, why do you do what you do. And that's part of our branding. Our brand is about being here to help small business owners, but we give back to our community as well.
I could honestly probably spend the whole podcast going into our community involvement that we do, whether it be working with Coach Sam's, the Cleveland Food Bank, and as a proud partner of the Cleveland Browns. Our community give back or giving back to the community is a huge part of our brand and who we are. It ties back to how we treat our small business owners. EMS is here, not only for just health and longevity for business owners, but our community as well. We just want to help both. We want to empower both and help everyone grow.
Brian: There's a lot of studies that indicate purpose-driven or mission-driven brands like EMS have causes they support. And there's specific reasons for that. You know I'm a big fan of food banks. I was on the board of Second Harvest Food Bank of North Central Ohio for 10 straight years, so I always like to go to the food bank conversation. Share why EMS supports the Cleveland food bank? And what does that look like?
Cole: In terms of what volunteer engagement looks like, we're a sponsor every single year. EMS allows employees to volunteer during work hours for four to six hours to help just stock and distribute at the food bank. I think the biggest reason we support Cleveland is, you know, we were founded here in 1988. And it's just at our core, we love the city, and we just want to help the city as much as we possibly can. And it's just it's a way to give back and the way I look at it, and I can't speak on behalf of our C level execs. But the way I look at it is the city of Cleveland has been very kind to us. And for us to be able to give back to it. It's the absolute least we can do.
Merrell: The health and well-being and prosperity of our community helps EMS. Whatever we can do to help our community is what we try to do, and it makes our employees feel good too. EMS always look for organizations that have some participation option for our employees.
Cole: When I tell friends about EMS and why I enjoy working here; I love volunteering and EMS gives me the opportunities to do that I just, it makes me feel so good … knowing we're making a huge difference for children's literacy and getting organizations the funding they need to continue the programs going.
Merrell: Our culture kind of developed around these processes. One that everybody looks forward to every year is the Cleveland Browns toy drive. We're a sponsor and we also coexist all around the outside of the stadium with the US Marines. 2021 will be our fifth year and the first year it was hard to get enough people. The people that participated loved it and told their friends. The next year, quickly got the number of people we needed, and now we have so many people that want to participate in the event we have to turn people down.
Brian: What I love hearing in these stories is that you're igniting and opening up personal purpose in the employees so that they are more fulfilled at work and they're more fulfilled personally. We know from research and from other purpose-driven companies (like Vitamix) that when you ignite personal purpose through a company, you get more engaged employees. When employees are purpose-driven, they are going to be more interested in supporting the company culture and the success of the company.
How can people get in touch with Electronic Merchant Systems, the products and services you offer, the company culture, and about all the great things that you do in the community?
Merrell: You can find us online and on social media:
Connect with Merrell Sheehan or Cole Godsey on LinkedIn
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