Let’s face it – everyone has a painting “war story.” Maybe your ingenious idea to use old sheets as paint drop cloths didn’t do your carpet any favors. Or maybe your excellent driving caused your just-bought paint buckets to burst open in the trunk of your car. Hey, maybe you’re a paint expert – but you have a friend whose Picasso-inspired toddler took a sharpie to their walls.
It may come as a surprise, but something positive can come from all those “war stories.” These (retrospectively!) comedic adventures can help you connect with your customers on a more personal level. Then, through the medium of the relevant anecdote, you can can offer your customer a lifeline by providing them the opportunity to receive exactly the same color again and again by saving their formulas.
What’s the point?
Now, some of you may still be asking yourselves, “What is the point of saving a customer’s color formulas?”
That’s a great question! Not only does it provide a better service to your customer, it turns them into a happy repeat customer – especially in the event of a paint-tastrophe like those listed above.
It doesn’t just help your customers, though. It also benefits your paint department as a whole. When you save your customer’s color formulas, you can easily, endlessly, and precisely redispense the same formula. Not only that, but a good color matching software allows you to quickly search through thousands of your customer’s electronic formulas in seconds. This system is also able to reformulate the same color into different sheens or products. Finally, pairing your software with a spectro allows you to correct mistinted paint colors. This cuts down not only on time, but unnecessary costs as well!
I like my index cards
Others may be reading this and saying, “Wait a second – we’ve already been saving costumer color preferences on index cards! Why should we change that now?”
We’re happy to report that saving customer formulas in the color matching software erases the common pitfalls of the standard index card process.
Using index cards is an excellent first-step, but when you are handling hundreds of formulas, efficiency is key. Invaluable amounts of time and resources can be saved by having the ability to quickly search and redispense formulas by storing them electronically using a color matching software. An added benefit of saving your customer’s formulas electronically is its ability to reformulate the color into different sheens/products. Index card file systems do not support this important advantage. Saving your formulas electronically also gives an added level of professionalism to your paint department. If these reasons were not enough to consider saving customer formulas electronically, here is one last bit of food for thought: using the program over index cards eliminates the possibility of a card becoming lost, or someone’s illegible handwriting rendering it useless. By saving your formulas electronically, they’re always immediately available, whenever you need them.
I already save my customer’s files
If you are already saving your customer’s formulas electronically, kudos! In that case, our biggest piece of advice is to complete a regular backup of your files onto a flash drive. This avoids any negative effects a rogue lighting storm may have on your valuable customer files.
Bottom line?
Save your customer’s paint formulas! If you have color matching software, it doesn’t cost a thing to start saving! If you don’t have color matching software, it pays for itself. It puts time and money back in your pocket, and the positive experience will encourage customers to return to your store again and again!
Crystal Cox
Senior Applications Specialist
Want to Get Color Right? 
