Keep them coming back with a "Customer of the Month" awards program

Do you reward your customers when they do something right? Everybody loves to be "stroked," and a Customer Photo of the Month program is a great way to do it. Here’s how we implement our program at Chris' Camera Center in Pompton Lakes, New Jersey.

Our senior lab technicians keep an eye open for especially good photographs as they process rolls. We flag the bag with a post-it note and when the customer comes in, say something like this: "Andrew, that picture from New Mexico was really terrific. Would you mind if we made posters for our Customer Photo of the Month program and put one in the window?"

Now, who’s going to say no?

We make the posters with our digital imaging station. We scan the print and make a 9"x13" file, at 300 dpi,  in Adobe PhotoShop.

(In addition to our dye-sub printer, we have a Hewlett Packard ink jet printer that can handle images up to 12"x18".) After we’ve "tweaked" the image a little, we increase the canvas size to 12 x 18", which gives us room to add some text. Then we print it on Epson Photo Grade Super B paper (13" x 19") and hang one copy in the window. We give another to the customer. I’ll also post a smaller copy to our website at ChrisCamera.com

You know darn well the customer will send his or her friends down to look in the window, and they’ll have a warm fuzzy feeling about us.

When we select the next "Photo of the Month" we take the old one out of the windows and hang it up along our hallway. That way the customers are reminded, every time they walk into the store, that we regard them as somebody special.