The Two Parts to Every Business Transaction

This tip is from my friend, Rick Segel.  Rick is a seasoned retailer of 26 years and the author of 9 books.  His common sense solutions and creative retail marketing ideas will make your business more profitable and I’ll show you how you can get his weekly retail money making tip for FREE below.  

In this tip Rick talks about the two parts to every business transaction.  In my Make-You-Happy Customer Service System I refer to this as “Put YOU Into Every Customer Contact”, and my first day team member training DVD shows you exactly how to be sure your team “Puts “YOU (themselves) into every customer contact.”

Here’s Rick
”Every business situation has two components. One is the business part and the other is the human component.  The business part is the part that is required to conduct the business. It occurs when a cashier rings in your sale, puts the merchandise in the bag, and even asks you if you would like to be part of a preferred customer program. The human part is the way that it is done in order to create a warm fuzzy feeling or create an emotional attachment with the customer.

Logic makes us shop, but emotions make us buy. Logic makes us compare prices. Logic creates brand awareness.  But only the emotional human part makes the final choice.  It’s the difference between brand awareness and brand
insistence.  

This has always been a constant theme of mine because I believe that it is the essence of what good customer service is all about. The reason why I have decided to use this as this week’s tip is because the concept was never clearer for me than it was this past weekend. One of the reasons why I love my job so much is because of some of the interesting and diverse places that I get to visit.  This past weekend, I had what would be considered one of the more exciting jobs a speaker can have. An association invited me to spend 5 days with them on a cruise ship where I had to moderate a panel and also do a 3-hour training session. (What a job!!!) That gave me lots of extra time to enjoy the facilities on the ship.

This ship had a wonderful little casino where I spent probably more time than I normally would have only because I had the time. I am not that big a gambler but I do enjoy playing some of the table games. I was playing black jack and observing one particular dealer who drove home the point of the 2 parts of customer service. The first dealer that we had was friendly, bubbly, and teasing with the players. He was fun to play with and made you want to stay at that table perhaps a little longer than you should have. He wasn’t the most efficient and always needed a little help counting how many points a player had.  

Then we got the “ice lady”. That’s what I called her. Technically, she was probably the best dealer that I had ever seen. She was fast; she was accurate; she was knowledgeable. The problem was that she had no human part. She never smiled; she never joked; she seemed annoyed when someone even asked a conversational question. She took all the fun out of the game.  The strange part about it was that she made it so that I didn’t want to play regardless of how well I was doing.

There was just no emotion. There were no smiles. There was no sympathy when she got a 21. She drove people away from the business even though she did everything correctly.  So, don’t tell me that quality is #1 unless part of quality is the human component. But there is the essence of the problem.

How much of the human part does someone want? There were people sitting at that blackjack table who thought that the “ice lady” was the best dealer that they ever experienced. But I felt the opposite. I was there to have fun and kill some time. Some of the other people were more serious gamblers than I am.

That’s why it’s becoming more important to try to determine the emotional preferences of your customers. Some people want a lot of the human touch and some people don’t want much at all. But it is our job to determine the emotional level that our customers require to have a powerful experience.

May be the answer to great customer service is easy - always offer both components. The tough part is finding out how much someone wants and then delivering customized personalized service for everyone. Burger King almost had it right. Yes, have it your way, but also deliver it your way as well. Master that and you will be considered a master of customer service.  

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