Good Customer Service is Absolute Gold for Small Businesses. Why Do So Many Take It For Granted?
We experienced the good, the bad, and the slightly ugly recently.
Tuesday. 10:30 in the morning.
Where else would you rather be than in a coffee shop with a steaming latte cupped between your hands?
That’s where Christine (my wife) and I found ourselves recently. Ah, the life of solopreneur spouses.
But it wasn’t all sunshine and roses on this occasion.
We’d just had a poor experience in a local bookshop. Christine had gone in to pick up a newly-released novel, one she’d waited to read for months, only to be told it was still “in one of the delivery boxes” and they might have it unpacked if we came back in 20 minutes.
That was poor enough (novels should be on bookshelves on their release date, right?).
So we did as they asked. We went to a nearby coffee shop, sipped our hot beverages, killed some time, and went back.
Nope. It seemed the novel in question hadn’t been delivered after all. Maybe it’d be in tomorrow if we wanted to come back then.
An unfortunate end to an otherwise pleasant morning trip into town.
As small business owners, Christine and I know the importance of good customer service. It’s absolutely crucial if entre- and solopreneurs are to survive in the digital age.
The bookshop staff did very little to help during both our visits to the store. We’ll be back (it’s a place we visit a lot), but not for the novel Christine was excited to buy. She ordered it online later that day.
Poor customer service (or at least, an unwillingness to attempt good customer service) will kill businesses faster than anything else in the era of next-day delivery and direct streaming services.
Contrast, then, our bookshop experience with another visit to a local store on the same street…
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