I was almost blown away by great customer service this week – instead I was mightily impressed, but left thinking what a trick had been missed by the shop owner!! OK, so when I entered the shop, the lady behind the counter, later to reveal herself as the owner, smiled and said hello. A great start!
Her Shop was compact, yet she had an enticing window display, such that I entered for a look inside.
I wasn’t let down – the window display had given the correct impression of what would likely be on view inside. Some of the items were most appealing and I was considering making a purchase when she again spoke from behind the counter…..
“You seem to like my stock,” she said, to which I replied, “Yes, you have some lovely items”. All going well so far!
“May I ask, do you have an online presence?” she asked. “Indeed I do,” I said, thinking great, this lady knows how to market her business!!
At this point, she came to me and passed me her business card – “This is our website. We change our stock weekly so I ask you to visit it every week and see what we have in stock”
So near and yet so far!!!!
OK, so she’s probably got a reasonable chance that in doing what she does, she will attract a certain amount of traffic to her website – Traffic is, without exception, fantastic!! Well done to her.
However……
How much more traffic might she get if she had instead said “May I take your email address so that I can send you regular updates as our stock changes weekly”. She would be creating her own customer database, to whom she could conduct bulk email marketing with details of sales/offers, newsletters, blogs etc. This would be a prime example of one of the advantages of direct marketing, placing her business out into the larger shop window of the internet!!
What she has also done is expected me to take the trouble to visit her website instead of sending her website to me…. OK, a subtle difference, but nevertheless one that whilst not detracting from her excellent service skills, maybe the difference between achieving a sale and not!!
Maybe I’m being picky, but I spot these things – these are real differentiators that set you aside from your competition, that give you the edge, and they’re not difficult! If she has a website and regularly updates it, it would be really easy to bulk email her clients. Your customers are your business’s lifeblood, so why not keep a customer database/sales database – it’s easier to sell to someone you’ve sold to before than it is to someone new!!
