Great Ideas for your Small Business:
Don’t Make Your Customers Angry
One of the smartest businesspeople i know is my grandfather, George Coan. He finally retired after sixty-six years in the retail business. Yes, sixty- six years!
Coan started his retail career as a teenager, selling clothes on the Lower East Side of New York City. Movie-star handsome and always a snappy dresser, he worked his way up to store manager and eventually served as vice president of personnel for a major East Coast men’s clothing chain.
Soon after he retired and moved to North Miami, he sold leisure wear in a tiny boutique in his condominium com- plex. He offered this great idea based on his experience waiting on thousands of customers. “Whatever you do, don’t make your customer angry.” It sounds simple, but so many things in a retail setting can upset a customer. For example, if you make a customer wait too long while you look for their size or obtain a credit approval, they grow impatient.
If your salespeople are rude, act bored, or are careless, you will alienate customers. Nothing is worse than waiting for a salesclerk to finish a chatty conversation with a colleague or cooling your heels while they blab away on a personal call. Customers are gold to any business. If you do things to upset them, they may walk away and never return.
You want every person’s visit to your store to be a pleasure, not a nightmare.
With so many alternatives to retail shopping, including mail order and electronic commerce on the World Wide Web, do everything you can to keep your customers coming back, checkbook in hand.