Customer Relations

What is a customer?

Is it someone who buys our goods or services? Or is it someone who has a need that they can’t fulfil by themselves, and they are seeking a solution to their problem?

How do we find out why they are here? We need to ask them because we cannot guess with any degree of accuracy. Just looking at someone does not give us any insight as to why they are in our store, office, building or digital platform.

I worked in retail for many years and trying to find out why a customer came in was always difficult and I think it has become a defence mechanism so that somebody (generally a slick salesperson) won’t sell them something they don’t want. When approaching a customer and asking them if you can help them with anything the standard answer was given ‘just looking, thanks’ always polite but dismissive. It has become so ingrained in people that if I had approached them and said “the building is on fire, you need to leave now” they would most likely reply “just looking, thanks”.

There are probably thousands of reasons why someone won’t say what they are looking for or why they are now in your business some of them may be; embarrassment, they are a competitor, they can’t remember exactly what they are looking for, they are comparing your prices, or they simply have no money at that time.

With so much purchasing of goods and services now online it is even easier for a shopper to apply the “just looking, thanks” process by simply clicking elsewhere.

It doesn’t matter the reason why they are visiting your business, the important thing is to provide them with the opportunity to tell you.

How do you do that? The opened ended question or a statement will provide the best, not necessarily a foolproof solution to the task. “What can I help you with today?”, “That shirt is still available in our full-size range”, and “All our women’s shoes are 10% off today”.

Even if you are not supplied with immediate gratification and the customer may still say “Just looking, thanks” the information has been passed to them and somehow it is slowly ticking away in their mind. Not feeling threatened, I don’t have to answer with why I am really here, I’m not embarrassed, and when I have money I will come back.

This process can be applied online “thanks for stopping by…..here is our offer ” this can be text or you can use a sales-bot.

So if the person becomes a purchaser, what do we do?

For goodness sake ask them some questions about the purchase. If the goods or services are usually associated with other goods or services that you supply, ask them if they need them as well.

An example of someone purchasing paint and a brush; do they have masking tape, a drop cloth, a ladder, a floodlight to paint indoors etc. Nothing irks a purchaser more than when the seller does not provide information that may be useful.

What happens when someone becomes a purchaser? We can take on another relationship with them, as a potential repeat customer and an advocate of our brand. We delve deeper into this relationship in our Pro Membership topics.

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and goings-on as a Success Box member.

# customer, repeat, purchaser, sales, advocate

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