We are planning to renovate our kitchen soon and these past couple of weekends we have been shopping for the appliances, you know - the range, fridge, dishwasher etc. This weekend we went to two stores, Pacific Sales and Lowes, and the difference in their customer service was staggering. I wouldn't generalize and say one store offers better service than the other on the whole, but the sales representatives we talked to in each of these stores were two ends of the spectrum.
The rep in Pacific Sales, an old white guy, was trying to ignore us and go after the other white customers. And since there were no other free reps, we just went up to him and demanded his attention. He helped us out fine but with the attitude of doing us a big favor. Even asking us once in a not-so-nice tone, "Are you going to buy today?". That was it. We got all the information we needed and left. We could have bought everything there but we didn't just because we didn't want him to get the commission/sales count/whatever they get tracked by.
The next day we went to Lowes and this young fellow helped us out with everything. He was very polite, smart, remembered prices/serial numbers off the top of his head, did the math with all the discounts etc. in his head, was internet-savvy so he could quickly look up the models we wanted but were not in the store etc. Needless to say - we purchased all the appliances in Lowes.
Basically customer service matters! And this can be applied everywhere - retail stores, businesses, restaurants and even in IT. Subject matter expertise is not enough, you need to also know how to communicate with your customers. It's not hard to implement and it has good returns.
3 comments:
Most people expect to get great customer service but do not necessarily know how to provide it. However, it is mere common sense. Most consumer product sales reps (and companies encourage this too) have the attitude that if a deal cannot be closed on that day then that customer is not worth their time but they do not realise that good customer service could actually help them close a deal. I don't understand why so-called adults/professionals don't get things that a 5 year old gets. May be people become dumber as they grow older. :)
Yes.Good customer service is of uttermost importance. Sometimes we have let go a couple of dollars deal at one store only because we like the service person and the service at the other store.Similarly I have also been turned off buy awful services,one such place is Sears.
May be stores should publish a toll free number called "How am I representing the store?" just like we see toll free numbers for "How am I driving?" on the back of service vehicles.
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