{"id":1422,"date":"2011-06-08T00:00:02","date_gmt":"2011-06-08T07:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fishingforcustomers.com\/?p=1422"},"modified":"2022-01-03T10:13:16","modified_gmt":"2022-01-03T17:13:16","slug":"how-to-instantly-make-a-poor-customer-impression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/develop-my-site.com\/fishing2\/how-to-instantly-make-a-poor-customer-impression\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Instantly Make a Poor Customer Impression"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Restaurant<\/a>

Restaurant Breakfast<\/p><\/div>\n

Roger met me at a local family restaurant. With the ease of old friends not having seen each other for months, we slipped into a \u201ccatching up\u201d conversation over breakfast.<\/p>\n

I casually asked, \u201cHow’s your food, Rog?<\/em>\u201d Roger paused, considered, and told me, \u201cIt’s quite good.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

I pointed to the ceiling fan roughly ten feet to my left, and said, \u201cNotice the dust build-up on the fan?<\/em>\u201d Roger confessed he hadn’t. <\/p>\n

I directed his attention to the rear door, and asked, \u201cCan you see the cobwebs on the Exit sign from here<\/em>?\u201d Roger admitted that he could.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n

I pointed out the filthy black build up on the air return vent next to the kitchen. Again I asked, \u201cHow’s the food taste now, Roger?<\/em>\u201d He replied, \u201cNot as good.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

I wanted to know why. Roger looked at me, and disappointedly told me, \u201cIf the front of the house is this filthy, I can only imagine how disgusting the kitchen must be.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

Critical Non-Essentials<\/h3>\n
\"Dr.<\/a>

Dr. Paddi Lund<\/p><\/div>\n

One wouldn’t think restaurants have much to do with dentistry, but there is a commonality.<\/p>\n

People don\u2019t have any specific knowledge as to whether their dental practitioner is any good at dentistry. They aren\u2019t qualified to judge his education,\u00a0 experience, or even the quality of his fillings.<\/p>\n

But, they do know how to recognize that the florescent lights in his hallway are flickering, and that he’s out of paper towels in the men\u2019s room.<\/p>\n

Australian Dentist, Paddi Lund, named these little signs that your business is properly attended to as \u201cCritical Non-Essentials.\u201d\u00a0 They are items which have no effect on the service one provides, but have tremendous influence on the opinions of\u00a0 customers about the quality of the work performed.<\/p>\n

The florescent tubes and paper towels are non-essential to the practice of dentistry. They are critical to patient assessment of the dentist\u2019s competence.<\/p>\n

So the patients conclude a dentist who won\u2019t keep his practice equipped and stocked with the basics can\u2019t be a very good business person. By extension, he\u2019s probably not a very good dentist, either.<\/p>\n

Clean return air vents are non-essential to food service. They are critical to the customer’s assessment of food quality. Services like cosmetic dentist Colorado Springs<\/a> have vacuumed carpets and tidy shelves are non-essential to fabric sales. They are critical to customer assessment of fabric quality.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, it isn\u2019t just the critical non-essentials that form people\u2019s opinions of our businesses.<\/p>\n

One Man\u2019s \u201cUntidy\u201d is Another Man\u2019s \u201cCreative.\u201d<\/h3>\n

We expect novelists to work in cluttered offices. Neat, tidy, everything-in-its-place organization would be out of character. But an attorney working in a disorganized, untidy office projects incompetence.<\/p>\n

And florescent lights hanging by chains from the ceiling are perfectly appropriate for a warehouse shopping club, but woefully inadequate for a jewelery.<\/p>\n

In general, softer surfaces, subdued colors, wall treatments, indirect lighting, and less noisy showrooms prepare shoppers for higher prices. They also help customers to \u201crank\u201d us within our professions. And then they compare us to our competitors.<\/p>\n

A carpeted store with wallpaper, indirect lights, and soft music will project better quality merchandise than a store with cement floors, painted cinderblock walls, and loud echoes of forklifts.<\/p>\n

But, if that second store is impeccably clean, while the first store\u2019s windows are grimy and restroom trash baskets are overflowing, you can predict where people will prefer to shop.<\/p>\n

Consciously or not, people judge our competence both by their expectations of our profession, and by those critical non-essentials.<\/p>\n

If those non-essentials are so important, why doesn\u2019t everyone pay closer attention to them? Mostly because the change from excellent to unacceptable is so gradual.<\/p>\n

And when businesses are running as lean as most are today, there simply isn\u2019t anyone assigned the responsibility of checking the volume of the background music or the dates on the magazines in the waiting room.<\/p>\n

We Need Systems<\/h3>\n

If each business had a list of assignments that was checked before they opened each day, and periodically throughout the day, it wouldn\u2019t much matter who was on duty, would it? The work of the company would be done, and those non-essentials which contribute so much to each business\u2019 image would be attended to as well.<\/p>\n

If you don\u2019t have a checklist, create one. Do it today.<\/p>\n

When I\u2019m evaluating a new client (and his competitors) I use a proprietary list of over 100 points at which customers come into contact with the company. Mine is organized by our five senses.<\/p>\n

What contributes to imperfections customers could see, hear, or smell? What will they touch? What can they taste?<\/p>\n

What will contribute to your customers first impressions? Their last? Does their experience end at check out? In the parking lot? Or when you follow-up after the sale?<\/p>\n

Your checklist may resemble that of other businesses, but it won\u2019t be identical. How could it?<\/p>\n

What About Customer Referrals?<\/h3>\n

Even if you never \u201cwow\u201d a customer, over time, what do you think will happen if you never disappoint?<\/p>\n

Does your company use such a system? Join the conversation, and tell us about it.<\/p>\n

If not, why not start one today? Improving the bait makes your job much easier when you’re fishing for customers.<\/p>\n

Your Guide,
\nChuck McKay<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Your Fishing for Customers guide, Chuck McKay, gets people to buy more of what you sell.<\/p>\n

Have you identified the critical non-essentials in your business? Maybe it’s time to start a conversation with Chuck about them. Call him at 317-207-0028. The man loves to talk about acquiring new customers and keeping current ones. Or, drop him a note at ChuckMcKay@ChuckMcKayOnLine.com<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If a restaurant’s ceiling fans and air ducts are filthy, what can you conclude about the food?<\/p>\n

Or do these things matter at all?<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1423,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[42,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-credibility","category-featured-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop-my-site.com\/fishing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop-my-site.com\/fishing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop-my-site.com\/fishing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop-my-site.com\/fishing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop-my-site.com\/fishing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1422"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"https:\/\/develop-my-site.com\/fishing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1422\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20346,"href":"https:\/\/develop-my-site.com\/fishing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1422\/revisions\/20346"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop-my-site.com\/fishing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop-my-site.com\/fishing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop-my-site.com\/fishing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop-my-site.com\/fishing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}