The 411 on Business, Pt. 2
The old saying “The customer is always right!”, my question is, are they? At what point is the customer wrong and what do you do? As the business owner struggling to survive do you suck it up and allow yourself or your staff to be berated? My answer is absolutely NOT!
The customer is the lifeline to your business and that means you have to cater to them and make sure they are satisfied in the hopes that they will return. Of course, you are never guaranteed that they will. From the moment you answer a call or they walk in the front door you have to turn on the charm and make them feel welcomed. If a customer gets a bad vibe from the start you are doomed! Every action taken after will be suspect in their mind. It doesn’t matter if you just got off a call telling you that your mother has taken a turn for the worse or your son was called to the principal’s office and you have to go! Being a business owner means that your personal life doesn’t factor in and you are expected to be well a robot programmed too nice and professional!
Once you get pass the initial pleasantries, you get to the bones of why they came to see you. The ordering process is crucial and needs to be meticulous! The customer will tell you of the grandest vision that came to them and how precisely they would like their order to be done. They will give you a list of the most beautiful and expensive flowers to be used. Of course, majority will say absolutely no carnations and then ask for a quote! As soon as the price leaves your lips, the customer will look at you as if you suddenly exposed a third eye and say, “I’m not paying that it’s just flowers!”. As you sit there in disbelief knowing that you are already basically giving your talent away you try to make adjustments to fit the “budget” all the while thinking this person is nuts coming in here with champagne taste on a carnation budget! You then find alternate flowers to acheive the look while staying on budget. In doing so taking entirely too long with this one customer and ultimately putting yourself behind schedule with everything else on your plate for the day! Best believe, that customer doesn’t care that you will now miss your son’s football game because you spent two hours trying to satisfy them!
From this point, you get to the design phase of the game! You have taken the order and now you have to fill it. You have to make the dream into reality! This is where being meticulous comes into play. As a floral designer, you have to be able to read the order and create a gorgeous floral masterpiece according to what the customer requested. You pour everything you have into the arrangement and when you are finished you stand back and view your labor of love! At this precise moment you start to reflect on the conversation and the thoughts of did I do this right start pouring in! Now you are uneasy and ponder starting over but decide to let it go as is! It heads out the door and you move on to your next task!
The next day that customer calls and is very angry! You get called away from the task you are on because the customer has become very belligerent with one of your employees. When you get to the phone the customer begins with how very disappointed they were and demands a full refund! Now you have to go through the motions of trying to figure out what went wrong. You have dotted every I and crossed every T so what could possibly be the problem? You are then told that there was supposed to be a bow!!!!! The arrangement was beautiful, but the bow was left off. What you want to say is, “Are you effing kidding me right now?”! The customer loves the arrangement but expects a full refund because a bow was left off! My response is I will refund your money if you return the arrangement to me otherwise there will be no money refunded! The customer says, “my sister loves the arrangement though” so I reply well if she loves it then is there really a problem? After the how dare you and I will leave a negative review and some other insults from the customer, I inform that customer to never call again because I will not tolerate disrespect. You have to draw the line or they will swallow you whole! Deep down though you are very upset because as silly as it was that bow evidently meant something to the customer and if he/she would have handled the call differently the bow would have been delivered and added to the arrangement!
What about natural disasters, extreme weather conditions or mandated government restrictions? Where is the protection for the businesses when these things prevent us from fulfilling our responsibilities?