And How Is Your
Day Going?
 y wife went shopping
last Monday and, being a friendly sort of person, she asked the shop assistant
how her day was going. That was a big mistake. It seems the shop assistant's
day was not going very well at all and she spent the next few minutes telling
my wife about her troubles. As a result, my wife left the store loaded down
with the shop assistant's emotional baggage as well as her own parcels.
 The
next stop was the petrol station. Again my wife asked the chap pumping petrol
how his day was going, and again it was a mistake. It seems this fellow was
having such a bad day that he just couldn't wait for the day to end so he could
go home. At least that's what he told my wife. 'I sure wish I didn't have to
come to work,' he added.
'I guess if you didn't come to work, you wouldn't earn any money,' she replied.
He acknowledged that might be the case. 'What fun shopping is,' my wife thought
to herself as she drove away.
My wife was intrigued by the reactions of these two people, so for the rest
of the week she made a point of asking everyone who served her (I use the term
loosely) how their day was going. With just one exception, every one of the
thirty people she asked readily told her how they were having a bad day. Only
one person replied, 'Very well, thank you. And how is your day going?' She
was an employee of Smith & Caughey, one of the most up -market stores in New
Zealand.
The owners or managers of these places of business, which ranged from food
stores to exclusive retailers, from owner- operated businesses to nationwide
chainstores, have a serious problem. Apart from the fact that their staff are
ill-mannered (only the woman at Smith & Caughey appears to have been taught
the proper way to respond), they are all destroying value right from the very
first moment the customer enters their place of business.
In my view, whenever we purchase something, we ask ourselves what benefits
we received and which costs we had to pay to receive those benefits. If we
believe the benefits outweighed the costs, we are happy because we deem we
received value. On the other hand, if the costs seemed to us to be greater
than the benefits, we feel cheated, and we will not be eager to go back for
more. The purchase price, of course, is one of the costs we pay, but there
are others such as time, energy, and emotional costs. To many people, these
commodities are even more precious than money.
When, through their actions or words, your staff make your customers feel
worse than they did when they came into the store, they have required that
customer pay a large emotional cost. This increased cost may well tip the value
equation into overdraft, so that the customer feels they received little or
no value from the transaction, even though they walked out having bought what
they wanted at a great price.
We all work extremely hard to try to create superior value for our customers,
so it is sad to see thoughtless remarks and ill-mannered behaviour that can
so easily create drains to suck value out of our customer's experience with
us.
Remind your staff they should put themselves in their customer's shoes before
they speak or act. Customers come shopping for a good experience, not to be
made to feel miserable.
They are perfectly capable of doing that for themselves.
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