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What goes on inside a customer’s brain?

Being a successful marketer often comes down to knowing what is motivating your target audience. Providing good customer service also often comes down to knowing what your client needs and how to respond to that need.

So it can be useful to look inside a customer’s mind and try and understand what he is thinking.

With that in mind I offer you this true story. It happened on Monday while I was shop-sitting for a friend who runs a computer repair business. Every so often he has to go to Brisbane to stock up on parts and peripherals and Monday was one of those days.

I was sitting at his desk, working on one of my own projects when the phone rang and it was someone looking for my friend.

“I’m sorry, he’s not here today and won’t be back till tomorrow. Can I help you?”

“My computer isn’t working and I need it to do some very urgent work.”

“I see; can you give me some idea of what’s wrong?”

“It wasn’t working properly so I took out the hard drive and swapped it for another one.”

“And did that hard drive have an operating system on it?”

“When it wouldn’t work I swapped it back.”
(Note that he didn’t actually answer my question.)

“And did anything happen then?”

“It wouldn’t boot up at all … but it started making a beeping sound.”

“I see.”

“So I pulled out the RAM and the graphics card and that stopped the beeping.”
(I bet it did.)

“And I put it all back in and it still won’t boot up. What do you think the problem is?”

“I have no idea.”

“Can’t you help me?”

“No I can’t. You will need to bring it down to let Rick (the shop owner) have a look at it.”

“But I need it urgently! Can’t you tell me how to fix it over the phone.”

“No I can’t …” Click

Two hours later the same person came into the shop to see if I was telling the truth when I told him that the shop owner was away.

Sometimes I’m not sure that we really do want to look inside the customer’s brain because we might find that there isn’t much there. And what is there isn't very pretty to look at anyway.

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