Making a Strong Guarantee Customers Will Be Reluctant to Use

Many businesses use guarantees to increase sales and keep customers coming back for repeat sales.

Guarantees come in two basic forms:

Positive and Negative

A Positive Guarantee promises someone they will love the product.

A Negative Guarantee offers a solution if someone hates the product.

Isn't that the same thing?

Nope.

A positive guarantee may be structured such as: love the product or get a refund.

A negative guarantee is structured: if you hate the product you'll get a refund.

You will probably want to use a positive guarantee to reinforce the concept that you have a great product.

A positive guarantee also makes it easier to reduce the likelihood that someone will use it.

For example, consider the guarantee used by business intelligence firm Biztellect. There you will see a positive guarantee plus this:

"And in 30 days if you don't appreciate all of this just let us know. "

Here we have a combination where first a positive guarantee is used about the customer loving the service.

Then the kicker about a refund if they "don't appreciate" the service.

This is different than a "satisfaction guarantee" that is so common. Note the shift from "satisfaction guarantee" to "don't appreciate".

Big difference in emotions.

A satisfaction guarantee is vague and gives anyone any reason they want to ask for a refund.

By shifting the emotional terms to not "appreciating" a product there is a more specific reason that is emotionally needed to ask for a refund.

It isn't just a satisfaction, which is a given, but also not appreciating the work gone into a service.

The ultimate point being you can structure a strong guarantee and at the same time add language that will reduce refund claims.

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