Later this week I will be attending a luncheon hosted by our
local Chamber of Commerce. The guest
speaker is my personal friend and social media celebrity Dave Carroll. Dave’s a musician who has used his talents to
raise awareness of customer service in this country. For anyone who hasn’t heard of him, you can
visit his website at www.davecarrollmusic.com
for the full story.
So since we’re only 3 weeks away from Christmas I thought
this would be a fitting time to talk about the most important thing to a
business… customers! One of the most
important parts of the marketing plan is your personal selling activities. The customer experience is what people talk
about when they talk about your business.
Do you want people giving rave reviews about your business or do you
want people telling their friends to never shop in your store?
This is the time of year where you need to put aside your
ego and pride, just buckle down and do whatever needs to be done. Whatever the customer wants, you make it
happen. I would hope that you’re doing
that all year long, but at this time of the year, when you have 10 times more
people in your store than usual, it really is a challenge to stay on top of
every customer. But I can guarantee you
that if you can just focus on providing exceptional service to each and every
customer they will remember and appreciate it.
For many years I was a retail sales manager, first for a
telecommunications company, then for a clothing retailer. Each store that I managed achieved sales
results that surpassed the competition and the other store locations within the
company. And I truly believe it was
primarily because our customers felt appreciated in our store and kept coming
back… and bringing their friends with them.
Here are some tips to help you provide the best possible
customer experience.
·
Treat your customers like they are guests in
your home.
·
Brace yourself for the craziness. You know it’s going to be crazy busy so just
go with the flow. No point in stressing
out over it. Customers are already
stressed out as it is trying to complete their shopping. They don’t need you to be all frazzled too.
·
Anticipate your customers’ needs and order
enough product to have on hand. Not
having enough product leaves you with unhappy customers and lost sales.
·
Train your staff well. Staff need to be trained in customer service
and they need to know how to multi-task.
·
Drop everything when a customer enters your
store. Stop chatting with your
co-workers, put down the new shipment of product you just received, tell the
Purolator guy he’ll have to wait a second, and make your customer your number
one focus.
·
Conversations that are private in nature need to
held in a staff room where customers can’t hear you. I once walked into a store where a manager
was reprimanding an employee for being late, completely oblivious that a
customer had just walked into the store.
That just makes the whole shopping experience very uncomfortable.
So, unless you want to end up like United Air Lines as the
subject of a viral YouTube video bringing their terrible customer service to
light, give your customers everything they want and you just might be the
subject of a viral YouTube video praising your amazing company instead.
Happy selling!!
