It’s all about the customer

Your business foundation needs to start with the most basic of premises – how does your business serve your customer?

It’s important to remember, your business has nothing to do with you. It has everything to do with the customer.  

The product you sell. The service you provide. The price you charge. All of it has only one purpose: to attract and retain people willing to pay for it. You can have a million people walk by or stop in but if what you’re doing doesn’t resonate, it won’t matter.  Don’t confuse bodies with buyers.

I walked up to a vendor in a food hall at 8 a.m. one morning to grab some breakfast. It was actually a stealth visit to observe this particular vendor who wasn’t performing well.  

The menu board was confusing and difficult to read. It was one of those chalkboards with fancy writing – and not well done. The guy behind the counter was doing busy work and never acknowledged me while I stood there for a while trying to figure it out. Finally I asked, “What do you have for breakfast?” Without even looking up he said (actually more like grunted) that the breakfast menu was on the board. I spent a few more minutes trying to decipher the menu and finally found the breakfast section. At that point, it was already more trouble than it was worth.  The items offered were heavy, high-fat breakfast sandwiches; the type of food most of us eat occasionally but not on a Tuesday morning.  I asked him if they had anything lighter to eat.  He said no. So….no service. Wrong product. No sale.   

In later discussion with that same guy who turned out to be the owner, he refused to acknowledge that maybe he needed to adjust his menu and menu board to have greater appeal, not to mention his level of customer service and hospitality. Despite the fact he had almost no breakfast business, he insisted his breakfast menu was the result of his impeccable skills as a chef and that people should learn to love it.

So to him, a paying customer was clearly much less important than what he determined to be a unique menu.  Add to that a complete lack of customer service and you’ve got yourself a disaster waiting to happen.  It should come as no surprise to you he went out of business shortly after that. And he blamed everything and everybody for his demise – except himself.

You might think this is an extreme example but I assure you, it is not. Many small business owners become immersed in their “vision” or in the day- to- day detail of their businesses – unpacking new inventory, doing the books and scheduling employees.  The customer ends up being a distraction.

Let me be perfectly clear: the customer is not a distraction to your business. The customer is your business.

Another equally annoying experience happened in a large department store. Their “revamped” shoe department was my idea of hell. Each designer has their own little store- in- store set up spread out over an overwhelmingly large space. If you want to try on shoes, you need to move from one “store” to the next. You can’t just choose shoes from different designers.  You have to keep making pit stops and try on shoes in the individual stores. Now that might not be so bad if there had been associates in each department. But that’s not how it’s set up.

In order to try on the shoes, you have to wave down an order taker of which they had too few on the floor. In my case, I flagged down a sullen young man with a smart device. Never looking up, he checked on the availability of the shoes in my size, put in the order and walked away. He didn’t say, “They’ll be out in 5 minutes.”  He didn’t say hello. He didn’t say a WORD!  Nearly 10 minutes later, someone brought the shoes, dropped them on the floor in front of me and walked away. That was it.

Now, it just so happened I wanted to try one of the pairs in another size. Well apparently they didn’t take that into the service equation.  I never saw him again. Never got the shoes I wanted and walked out without buying anything.

In both these examples, the owners had ideas. In the case of the food vendor, he created very fancy and intricate breakfast items that no one wanted. In the case of the department store, their big idea was expansion and automation. I can assure you, in neither case did anyone even think about the customer!

I submit that in the customer service business, we really approach the whole thing backwards. We think it’s all about “our” idea and “our” concept and “our” passion. But it’s really about providing an experience, product or service that wows the target customer. Your customer is the reason for your business – not you!

Yes, you have a passion for your concept and that’s what enables you to get excited about going to work every day.   But I encourage you to take a minute to rethink -  to reroute that passion from your business and channel it to your customer.

Typically, a store or restaurant owner voices concerns about the number of visitors or the amount of sales – and the need for more of both.  Legitimate concerns, of course.  But here are some questions I’d love to hear from an owner about the people who visit their establishment.

I wonder if they loved buying here.
Did they enjoy the experience?
Did they feel valued?
What else can I do or sell that would elevate this experience?
Did I do everything I could to make sure they come back?

Now more than ever, it’s time to convert to a consumer-centric business model, one in which you laser target a specific customer profile, dig deep to determine not just what they want to buy but to figure out the best ways to bundle, service and add to the mix in ways that provide extraordinary benefit to that customer, inspire fierce loyalty and blow the competition out of the water!