I’m in the middle of a major renovation and if you’ve ever been through one yourself, you know exactly how much time and energy is required in order to make it through the process. Yesterday’s experience rose to the top of bizarre practices and made me wonder how businesses exist in spite of their non-customer friendly practices.
Yesterday was go pick out your granite day. I’ve done this several times before so I had a pretty good sense of how the day would go. Nothing could prepare me for the reality. You see, everywhere we turned we hit a brick wall.
We were provided a granite allowance by our contractor. In this situation, he told us we could choose any piece that was similar in price to the one that was called out in the specs. Seems like this would be simple, right? If only this were so. We asked the salesperson to tell us the price point so that we could see what other options were in our budget. Her reply, “I can’t tell you the prices. You’ll need to ask your fabricator.” Next call was to the contractor who in turn called the fabricator. Would you believe that the contractor was not even able to get a price for us? So we basically spent the day in a large warehouse picking out tons of slabs with the hope that one or two would fit our budget. What a waste of time. If I could have, I would have walked out of this place and never would have returned.
What practices might your company be operating with that are turning customers away? The loss of even one customer can make the difference between a great year and one that you hope you won’t repeat.
Ask those who are closest to the customer for their suggestions on how the organization might make themselves more customer friendly. Call up your customers and ask them what can be done to improve upon your product and services. Notice how I didn’t say survey. This is one of those situations where you need to know what your customers are thinking so you can take immediate action. Be sure you do something before another customer walks out the door and doesn’t return.
