By Maverick Steffen | Daily Marketing Advice

The Hair Cuttery has created a rather interesting, and to me, somewhat confusing guarantee in the interest of driving new business while maintaining existing. Are you ready for this?

The Hair Cuttery claims on their website:

"if for any reason you aren't 100% delighted with the service you've received, we'll do whatever it takes until you're smiling back in the mirror at the new you."

They are promoting it with this infographic:

I don't know about you, but this guarantee certainly made me squint in the interest of just trying to understand what lengths they will take to make a client smile back at the new themselves.

Now I'm not saying this guarantee isn't attractive, I'm just a little confused as to the scope of services available if I don't like the new me. Refund? A voucher for a future haircut? Etc. After all, if the Hair Cuttery takes the proverbial 'too much off', how can they possibly make you happy at that point?

Guarantees are a funny little marketing device. I am especially a huge fan of '30-Day Money Back Guarantee' as it has been scientifically proven that once people feel ownership over something, the likelihood they will return it or even quantify it as having its original perceived lower value is very unlikely. The bottom line is once people feel ownership over something, they value it more than before they owned it. This is also why it is difficult for people to leave their lazy and obnoxious lovers when they can clearly do much better. Read: Predictably Irrational.

The idea of a guarantee is two-fold:

1. Minimize risk to prospect thereby increasing buyer confidence
2. Maximize ability of customer service to maintain/satisfy existing clients/customers

What the Hair Cuttery did with their guarantee is ensure people would be happy about their new look. To be honest, the Hair Cuttery already does this, which is why this guarantee, while perhaps not as dramatic as most, leverages an existing customer service approach by making it seem new and sexy.

So, what does your customer service already do to maximize customer satisfaction? Simply take that and 'sexy it up' that way the Hair Cuttery has done with theirs (i.e. using a smile as a metric for satisfaction).

For example:

Fence contractor: "It's your fence, so we guarantee you'll never be LOCKED OUT of your satisfaction with it."

Surge Protector Manufacturer: "If you experience a sudden surge of client dissatisfaction, we guarantee we'll sustain it."

You get the point.