I've just returned from a week-long visit to Melbourne. (Why is this of interest to me you ask?)
Well, Melbourne is supposed to be the retail capital of Australia. Indeed, we found dozens; no, hundreds of interesting stores there. Cafes, sports stores, fashion, designer labels - Melbourne's got the lot.
But do you know what? The customer service down there, with thousands of shoppers and tourists with money burning holes in their pockets, was very ordinary. There's no reason why service shouldn't be good everywhere but time and time again I have to ask why it isn't. (By now, it may be apparent that I'm unimpressed by poor service.)
At the sake of repeating myself, here's the message again: the reason a business exists is to make sales. Retail is one of the biggest business sectors, Over 50% of all spending is done at retail level and that the retail sector is one of the top three or four employers in the world, yet in most stores no selling takes place.
I spoke with a friend of mine about this today. He's involved in business training too. He told me that in a workshop he ran last year, he asked the question of the business owners in attendance "Are you involved in selling?" All but one said No. The rest all had another version - they were there to "make friends" or "answer questions" Guess who had the biggest, most profitable business? You guessed it. The one who said he was in the sales business.
Anyway, back to the Melbourne trip. Here are some of the experiences we had...
We phoned a big-name sports store specializing in basketball gear. We asked if they carried NBA gear, memorabilia and uniforms and they said yes. We drove for 45 minutes to get to it but found when we got there that they only sold one brand; no NBA gear, no memorabilia; nothing of interest to us whatsoever. Incidentally, they were the only store where we were invited to join an email list... (Sidebar: it's the end of February now and we've since had one email from them.)
At another specialist basketball store (which we absolutely loved and visited twice) the two employees sat in a raised central kiosk and answered our questions in nothing more that monosyllabic grunts. Even when we purchased, they were almost non-communicative. One of my sons had about $300 in his pocket. He could quite easily been persuaded to spend it all there but only spent $79.
Why? Because he couldn't attract their attention to open memorabilia display cabinets or to get shoes of his size to try on.
He left without spending his money.
At the opposite end of the scale, we entered a specialist hobby store where the sole employee literally besieged us. He insisted on introducing himself to all three of us; thrusting brochures into our hands and not giving us a moment to look around. His opening line (we were total strangers) was "Hello, my name's (blank). I don't think I've seen you recently or at any time before that". We were delighted when another visitor walked in because he deserted us and besieged the other visitor - using the same opening line.
We used cabs three times. Two trips were at night and were of less than 10 minutes. On one, the driver couldn't speak English and couldn't understand where we wanted to go. On the second, the driver couldn't change a $20 - for a $10 fare!
If you own a business; if you are a consultant to business owners, if you're an employee or just know someone who owns a store; pass this message on. The purpose of the business is to generate customers. you do that by asking them questions about their interests and needs and then by addressing them.
Help them to own your product, show them how it works and encourage them to come back again by getting their name to send them information about the things they're interested in.
You must keep up to date with your profession. Learn effective processes that don't make you sound like yesterday's snake-oil salesman.
Start the learning process now and start making more and better sales today!
Some Customer Service Experiences In Melbourne - To learn more about this author, visit James Yuille's Website.
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