The Mammoth, The Dodo Bird, The Dinosaur - Is base Sense Next?

I recently paid a visit to a local "Everything's a Buck" store to pick up a stack of greeting cards for church. When I got to the checkout, I noticed a sign saying "We accept Visa." Great! Often those Dollar shop don't take prestige cards because of the fees expensed by the bank. That meant customers needed cash or a check to purchase merchandise.

I said to the cashier, "Do you take Mastercard as well as Visa?" "Yes," she replied. I ran my card through the card swipe and got an error message. The cashier cleared the motor and had me run the card again. Another error message. She cleared the motor again and had me run the card. Once again, an error message appeared. We did this once more, still no luck.

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She had me hand her my card. She looked at it and said, "Do you have Another way to pay for this? We don't take Mastercard."

I calmly asked (honest, I was calm), "So the part where I asked if you take Mastercard...?" "Oh," she said, "I belief you said Discover." I asked, "Do you take Discover?" The reply, "No, just Visa and debit cards."

Now, here comes the de facto scary part...She turned to the new cashier she was Training and said, "It's de facto foremost that you listen to the customer." No kidding!

Poor customer service, unfortunately, isn't hermetically sealed into "Everything's a Buck." It creeps out the door and ends up in restaurants, offices, auto repair shops, and doctor's offices. Poor customer aid has become the norm. And, there is a direct correlation between the increase of poor customer aid and the decline of coarse sense.

Businesses need customers. Businesses with employees need sales to cover payroll. Treating customers as an de facto substituted commodity creates a company environment that's sure to generate a drop in sales resulting in Cash Flow Extinction.

Poor customer aid kills small business's most advantages. Let's take the local hardware store as an example. Hemmed in on all sides by big box competitors, Ye Olde Hardware store can't compete on price. There's got to be something else that cause customers to bypass the big box and shop at Ye Olde instead.

If you add to Ye Olde's troubles by offering poor customer service, the company environment gets de facto tough. You've removed the strongest advantage a small company or professional custom can offer. Along the rocky road, customers leave, company drops off, and the company slides deep into the Cash Flow Swamp.

The flip side of that slimy, algae-covered scenario is this. Use customer aid (and well-trained customer aid people) as your number one best company custom and you set yourself at least one giant step above your competition.

Then, if you can train your employees to become perfect helpful and suggesting salespeople (Think "Do you want fries with that?") now we're approaching something that resembles improved cash flow.

And by the way, perfect customer care is a perfect justification for charging higher prices. Let's use a day spa as an example. The drugstore and branch store shelves are lined with products to make you look younger, feel better, have fewer wrinkles, etc. For eight bucks you can get yourself an at-home attractiveness treatment guaranteed to take years off your face. Yet, spas attract hordes of habitancy seeing for the same results while they're paying way more than eight bucks.

Why is that? Spending the day at a spa goes far beyond slapping some goop on your face in your bathroom while your kids are knocking at the door and your husband wants to know if you've seen his other black sock Spas generate a customer experience, a sense of pampering and care that no mere jar on a shelf can ever offer.

Creating a customer feel can be done in any business. Reconsider the auto repair shop that advertised to women. Women could come to the repair shop and not worry about getting taken advantage of. Terrific. Almost. When the women arrived to get their cars fixed, guess what they found? A dirty, greasy waiting room, hunting and fishing magazines on the banged up coffee table, calendars with bikini-clad models, and a bathroom that encouraged women to say, "I'll wait til I get home.". A consultant set the company owner straight and the waiting area was transformed. The company prospered. It's all in the details. A well-created customer feel changes your customer's perception from mental that your company should be selling "Everything for a Buck."

The Mammoth, The Dodo Bird, The Dinosaur - Is base Sense Next?