There are no excuses for this poor customer experience
It takes months to find a new customer … seconds to lose customers.
Recently my wife and I had our refrigerator compressor fail … not a very pleasant experience to start with. But our shopping experience for a new refrigerator at one store made our experience so much worse. ( I immediately came home and jotted down notes from the experience … truly the appliance salesman must having been trying to get us to leave.) Consider the events in this experience:
Bad first impression … no friendly, personalized service. In fact, the salesman rolled his eyes when we told him we were looking for a counterdepth model.
Staff shows no interest in helping … certainly did not want to do the work associated in finding information on models the store carried.
Don’t listen to your requirements … try to sell something the customer doesn’t want. Immediately after telling him we wanted a side by side, he took us to the French Door model to interest in the model he had in stock.
Make you wait for little to no reason … wastes customer’s precious time. No catalog or book was available to easily share information with the customer … only a small display and slow computer. It was impossible to show information to customers, even if he could find it, which he couldn’t.
Know less than the customer, don’t meet minimum expectations. Staff competency – employees are limited in ability to provide information to customer. When the staff have to look up the basic information, it annoys customers and wastes their time.
Other ways to lose customers, which we did not experience that day:
Staff not empowered to act.
Broken promises
No recovery process
The next store we visited, we had just the opposite experience and bought the model of our choice in half the time we spent at the first store.
Which store do you think we will revisit, and not revisit, the next time we are in the market for a new appliance?
Remember … customer experience is the new marketing.
Do you have a customer experience example to share?
Read more:
8 Ways to Build Employee Teamwork
10 Tips to Define Business Culture for Your Company
An Employee Development Process Checklist for Success
Digital Spark Marketing regularly runs workshops to facilitate the development of employee skills and motivation.
Call us today for a free consultation and discussion of your needs.
More on Digital Spark Marketing’s coaching services …
Mike is available for speaking commitments. For local area business clubs many can be done at no expense to you. To inquire, contact him at 607-725-8240.
Leave a Reply