I was having a morning meeting to review upcoming products at my favorite local coffee house, Epic Coffee in Rockford, MI. I had the opportunity to meet the owner, Sarah, and complimented her on the success of the shop and the great feeling I always get when I am there. She thanked me for the compliment and said the magic words I love to hear –
“I really enjoy getting to know my customers and try to treat them as if they were coming into my home.”
Now, if you’ve learned anything from reading my previous posts, this is the perfect approach to making your customers feel welcome. It says a lot about the culture that Sarah has instilled in her store. She wants to make people feel comfortable there so that they’ll want to return. She has customer service as the most important thing people notice. Sarah knows that if she treats people well and does the little extras, like warming coffee mugs, they’ll appreciate it and become loyal customers.
To take this into the corporate world, this holds true as well. Take a moment to look at how your office presents itself. How are the phones being answered? How does your office look? What is the appearance of your office staff? All of these things feed into your customer satisfaction levels. If you want to increase your customer satisfaction and retention, make your customers happy by making them feel welcome as if they were being welcomed into your home.
Your customers will thank you for it.
The idea of inviting customers “into your home” is a great word picture to understand how good customer service should feel.
Focus on “friendly”. We’re all friendly with guests in our home and customers LOVE friendly.