Putting Yourself in Your Customer’s Shoes
In today’s reality of retail serve-yourself sales, many front line employees have lost (or never learned) the ability to treat customers with the respect they deserve. Customers remember how they were treated at the checkout or in the aisles and a positive experience results in a loyal repeat customer.
At Home Depot, for example, this attitude is referred to as ‘Culture’. Compare Home Depot Culture to Canadian Tire Culture and you will understand what I am talking about. It’s common sense…put yourself in your customer’s shoes.
To be employed at Home Depot, you are evaluated on your ability to project a positive, helpful, caring cultural attitude, during the very first interview. If you’ve ‘got it’, you may get the job. If you don’t….you won’t. Plain and simple.
Good customer service starts at the top of any organization. When I receive poor treatment or get brushed off by a grumpy staff member, I don’t blame that employee….I blame management.
Teach by example: It doesn’t matter if you are General Motors or Fred’s Small Town Photography, your staff learn directly from YOU….like a child emulating their parents. So, we need to get our own customer service priorities straight first, before we can expect an employee to be conscientious about customers.
In my day to day dealings with people in any situation, I practice what I preach….. consistently. As a customer, if I can make a check-out cashier’s day a little brighter by being friendly, that’s good for everybody, right? Hopefully he or she will pass that positive experience on to the next customer.
It’s an attitude that we can all adapt to…must adapt to, if we want to be successful and happy in business and in life. We all want to be treated with respect, as human beings.
Call me ‘Old Fashioned’!
© 2009 Written for PhotoCoach International by Terry Robertson, MPA
14 November 2009 www.photocoach.com
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