Behind the counter

I spent five hours behind the counter working in one of my shops this afternoon.  While I am in my shops regularly and invariably serve customers, I rarely put in more than a hour at the coounter in any one stint.  The experience today reminded me…

• Good customer service is appreciated.  I saw customers spend mroe as a result.
• Good customer service is hard work.  In the face of a relentless stream of customers and challenging questions, every enounter takes focus and hard work. 
• Care by staff in providing good customer services is a gift.  Employees who do this are tremendously valuable in retail yet often undervalubed by employers – I am guilty of that.
• Customers can become store-blind to greeting cards sometimes.  By moving one range of Christmas cards, priced at $7.95 each, I was able to make them more visible and thereby drive sales of 26 units of this small range in the last four hours of today.
• The environment really does matter.  Customers love a good shopping environment and experience.  Being told many times today how much they enjoyed our shop made us feel good.
• Products are important in leveraging a point of difference.  If you sell a commodity item you are price compared. If your products and or services are unique, price comparison is challenging and sales easier.  This brings me back to customer service, it is the most crucial point of differerence we have.

I would love our suppliers to spend time behind the counter on a day like today.  They would learn why we get frustrated at out of date practices they force us to use, the supply of product on uncompetitive terms and lack of control in our businesses thanks to restrictions they impose.  But those are points for another time.

Beyond working with a couple of exceptional team members today and learning from the joy they showed in serving customers, is the happiness of our customers themselves – Christmas kicked in for me thanks to them.