Easy To Do Business
Is it easy to do business with you?
A year or so ago, I pulled into a local car wash for a quick cleaning. I pulled a little further than I was supposed to as one of the workers annoyingly waived me back. Nice. I moved back to the unobvious starting position and waited. Don’t customers just love waiting? Isn’t that what retailers strive for? After all, we love to wait. Barriers. Anyway, there I sit in my car, waiting. I check email, play a letter in Words with Friends, and check email again. Look around – no one. I actually sat there for a good 5-7 minutes, which is forever in this kind of situation, and no one came by. No one said, “We’ll be right with you, or “Sorry for the delay.” No one even looked in my direction. In fact, other than the guy who waived me back in the beginning, I didn’t see anyone who worked there. So, all the marketing, branding, location costs – all of it spent to get me and everyone else to come by – was wasted in my case. I left. Plus I told people. Lots of them. So do you. So do your customers and “would be” customers. Believe it or not, I actually went back, reluctantly, a few months later. It was out of pure convenience – right place and time. I pulled up – to the right spot this time. A worker walked toward my car (looking good…) and continued walking right by. No look, no comment, no nothing. Not again! But, eventually someone did come by and I went through the car wash. Clean car, but still lousy service.
Difficult to do business with. Barriers. Makes NO sense to me.
How about you? Is your team making it easy to work with? Do they greet people right away, with a smile and an attitude that suggests they might even want to like you and help you? Do you make people wait and if you do, because sometimes you must, how do you make it less painful or more efficient for the customer?
Is your building inviting? Is the parking the best it can be? Do you have the eternal phone tree for those of us calling in or a real person available to talk to another real person? Do you learn people’s names and use them, appropriately? If you have restrooms, are they CLEAN? Is your web site interesting, engaging and easy to navigate?
What about you as a person? Are you easy to do business with? Are you easy to talk to? Does your demeanor invite people in or does it put out a sign saying “Danger: Thin Ice”.
With all the customer service gimmicks, tricks and ideas, my #1 recommendation is this: Be easy to do business with. Be easy to talk to. Be fun. Be interesting. Be engaged.
People tend to take the path of least resistance. Think about it. Learn from it. Customer service success will become much easier when you do.