Importance of Customer Service

I had been planning on talking about the importance of customer service in this posting because of what happened to me last week… Briefly, I got the new iPhone4 (yay!). I love it besides the fact that my cheeks are constantly hanging up on people while I’m mid-sentence. Other than that – it’s great! For those of you that don’t personally know me, I’m extremely clumsy. Almost daily I trip over something, walk into something or somebody or drop something… That being said, the Otterbox is an awesome phone case for me because you can seriously throw it against the wall and your phone will remain protected. I’ve tested this several times. However, the new Otterbox for iPhone4 has not come out yet and I was on a mission last week to find a similar product or something that would at least somewhat protect my new expensive toy until I can get my Otterbox case. The AT&T store had sold out of cases so I headed over to Best Buy. I walked over to the phone section where two employees were bombarded with mounds of cases and phones. Both were with a customer and I patiently waited…and waited…and waited… After standing around looking through cases for about 20 minutes I started getting frustrated. Obviously the employee about 2 feet away from me sees my frustration and certainly sees me standing there. But he did not even say hello or say he will be right with me. Instead he said, you can’t open any of the boxes. I said okay, can someone tell me what case I need for this phone. He basically said any of the cases. (wrong…) Most were not going to fit this phone. So I chose three that looked right and ran around the store trying to find another employee to help me. The last thing I wanted was to deal with that jerk again. Anyway – one guy who seemed nice and looked like he might have a clue did not at all have even half a clue. I knew more than him about cases.

Ultimately, I was told I had to buy 2 cases in order to open them to see if either would fit and then I would have to exit the store and come back in to return them if they did not fit. REALLY???? There is not 1 employee that can tell me what case to buy? I wasn’t asking about pricing, color, all I wanted was something that would fit my freaking phone. Well I was bad – I opened one of the boxes – it didn’t fit so I neatly put it back. I bought the other case which looked okay. It didn’t fit… I went back in, right up to the guy who initially ignored me and said to him just give me a case that will fit the iPhone4 and has a screen cover. He pointed to another case which I then purchased. It did not have a screen cover. I went back over there and said I need a screen cover. He pointed to one. I purchased it. Only to realize that the screen cover will not fit into the case. At this point I almost started crying. Damn me for being so clumsy that I needed a case so badly. I went over to the returns desk to return all the cases that I initially purchased and FINALLY a girl there was helpful. Well, she was at least nice – not helpful. But she at least tried and was HONEST with me about what she knew and did not know.

Yesterday I went into staples while I was trying to hook up a computer I realized I had the wrong plug. The “tech” guy there, while nice and annoyingly flirty had no clue what he was talking about. Had I been as naive as I looked I would have been dragging a huge desktop PC into staples for some random kid to look at it who didn’t have the slightest idea of how to fix it and ultimately probably would have caused more damage than I had to begin with.

So… moral of this story… Customers sometimes drive you crazy. But being in business you have to understand that generally people are good and if they are not the nicest, there is probably a reason for it. Perhaps they just experienced the frustration I had at Best Buy. My point is, if you work with people in any business – yours or not… If you care at all about the success of business and like your job you will respect customers and at least try to be helpful and be honest about your knowledge. If you truly care about helping people solve their problems you will at least be able to empathize with their situation, listen to their needs, and offer some kind of solution. If you do not know the answer, be honest about it and try to help them find the answer. Don’t just try to be smart to impress them or because you don’t want to deal with them say whatever you feel. People are smarter than you may think and it will come back to bite you in the @$$. You’re nuts if you think I ever plan on going back to that Best Buy and that was the first and last time I will every turn to a “tech” guy at Staples for help – at least at that particular store.

If you just scrolled down to the bottom of this and chose to not read my rant that is fine. Just remember this… Don’t BS your way through helping a customer when you really do not know the answer they need. Be nice… and try to help. If you can’t handle that then you really shouldn’t be working with people.

Don't Go Diving in the Ocean Until You Learn to Swim

I used to work a lot with small businesses as a marketing consultant. I had my own company for a little while and almost each client had the same story. They wanted to get onto the "internet/facebook bandwagon". You know - that internet thing is really where they got stuck. But it went much further than they realized. It wasn't just that internet thing that they didn't understand but it was the foundation of their business. Some of my clients had lost sight of why they started their business in the first place and most of them never really took the time to get to know their who their clients were. That's really where the problem was and at that point I realized that I had my work cut out for me. In some ways, they expected me to build something from nothing which wasn't easy.

I understand as a small business owner you want to focus on what will bring in money because after all - what's really more important than the bottom line? If you don't have money coming in then how are you expected to survive? I totally get that. But before diving into an ocean filled will sharks and exotic fish, you want to do a little research - about the creatures you'd encounter and the environment. You want to know what you should wear and other ways you should prepare before diving in. Similarly, you want to do some research before starting. Get to know your customers - who are they, what do they think about at night, what problems do they deal with, where do you fit in, how can you help your customers live their lives easier or better? This is an ongoing process - you can't just read a biography and forget about it. Your customers are changing and adapting and you must do the same in order to be relevant.

I'll get into the "internet thing" in a later post. But for now, where would you be without your customers? Probably not in business. So in terms of the bottom line - what could possibly be more important than educating yourself on your customers?

--- FYI - I'm no expert and am certainly not pretending to be. There's more people than I can name or even know that are marketing gurus out there. I just figure it's about time I choose a focus for this blog and frankly, if there's anything I'm most passionate about, it's business, marketing and graphic design.

Here's the post that got me thinking on the purpose of my blog. So my goal is to keep this blog alive, interesting and helpful. Ultimately - I don't want it to suck and it would be nice if eventually people would read it. :)


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