The Invisible Act

By NormaH · August 24, 2009 · Filed in Customer Experience

IGNORING CUSTOMERS IS COSTING YOU SALES

We’ve all had this happen to us. You walk into a store and the sales people are too busy talking to each other, stocking shelves, or talking on the phone to acknowledge you. What happened to customer service? You do this long enough, and your customers will become invisible—on purpose!

I will admit that at one time, early in my career, I was guilty of this myself. Right out of design school, I was hired to work at a beautiful, high-end boutique as an assistant manager. My job was to manage the inventory, help supervise the staff and help with sales. One day, the manager called me into her office and said that she noticed that when customers came in the door, I often ignored them. OUCH!

Now, I knew better. My dad was an expert at engaging his customers as a hardware salesman. On many occasions I had the opportunity to see him in action and his customers loved him. The most important part of this true confession is that this lesson stuck with me throughout my career. Ignoring customer can cost you sales. Nothing is more important than the customer.

The other day I entered a store and there were two women at a register. One was behind the counter and one was leaning on it with her back to me. The women leaning on the counter turned her head to acknowledge me. That was nice but I was turned off by the fact that she never got up off the counter to greet me.

Train your staff to be fully engaged. Someone shared with me the 10 foot, 4 foot rule. Acknowledge your customers that are at a distance of 10 feet, and greet them at 4 feet. Let them know you are happy to have them in the store. “Welcome to our store”, “great to see you”, and “thank you for coming in today” are all nice ways to greet your customers. “May I help you” as the first thing you say is not. Customers are immune to it.

The invisible act is only for magicians. Let your customers know you care and that you are thankful for their business.

Norma is an innovative Sales Performance Consultant, Business Coach, Blogger and Speaker. Her goal is to inspire business owners to captivate their customers and turn them into raving fans so that their businesses can experience increased profits and more fun.