After dropping my daughter off at school this morning, I stopped by the local bagel shop.
“Sausage, egg and cheese on wheat. Salt bagel, double toasted, extra cream cheese. Coffee refill, please.”
“Do you have a daughter who goes to school?”
“Yes, she’s seven.”
“And your husband has a beard?”
“Yup.”
“Tell him I said hi. I recognized this bagel must be for him from the extra toasting, extra cream cheese.”
The bagel shop owner took an extra few seconds to connect with me on a more personal level than just saying hi. Not only did I mention this exchange to my husband, but it also struck me as important enough to blog about. In this tight economic times, spending a few extra seconds connecting with your customers, remembering an extra little personal detail, can go along way to providing you with good referrals and future business. All it takes are a few extra seconds and bit of effort to connect the dots.
(photo by erix! @ Flickr CC)
Technorati tags: business, customer service, customer-centric, marketing
{ 2 comments }
Great example, Sarah. This guy must sell a lot of bagels! I’m always preaching about knowing more about your customers. A large religious organization used to buy software debuggers from me, and one day I asked them what they were doing, software-wise. It turns out they had an initiative to work with Stanford U. on a liguistics project, and they were building langauage fonts for never-documented languages. Fascinating! I built a lot of rapport that day, and they became an important customer for me. In a nutshell, knowing a lot about one’s customers can turn a mediocre sales year into a good one.
Geoff, Thanks for sharing your story (and for reading). I agree that spending a little extra time getting to know people can be very beneficial. Sometimes it’s not even a short term thing, but in the future you may need to call on your network for a job or help, etc. Connecting with people can only be helpful and its both a good and cheap strategy.
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