 Happy people come back for more! It’s the experience that they buy first and then your product. This enormous army of shoppers consists of individuals looking for a memorable contact before signing any kind of contract. Do you have satisfied customers or do you always have to rely on new business? Because you sell a product or service doesn’t guarantee that these people will buy. And because you might have sold to them once doesn’t guarantee repeat business. Customers need to be treated as though every time is like the first exciting and memorable experience for them. How are you meeting and greeting these wonderful people who determine whether you stay in business? Are members of your staff using meaningless phrases used ad infinitum by bank tellers who say the words, ‘how are you today?’ and would be quite shocked for somebody to launch into a breakdown of their health. ‘Do you want fries with that?’ is an add-on at some junk-food outlets and possibly works as intended, but to treat customers to uncaring phrases is to overlook making sincere and genuine contact. There are ways to make any human contact interesting and to treat your customers as VIP’s, which they are, requires a little originality. I had occasion to work with a team of guys in IT who spent time on the help desk for a national company. Big Al was a mismatcher who resisted the idea of improving his communication skills. His belief was that he knew how to handle customers and that role playing and impromptu speaking was a waste of time. “I can’t see the relevance,” he complained. In fairness to big Al, he stayed the course and in fact became a star performer; having the decency to say how much he’d got out of the experience and the difference he now felt when dealing with customers. From adversary to advocate! Another group of people worked in the hospitality industry and were all under thirty years of age. Here’s what their caring boss had to say:
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