Customer service you can’t print

I needed a new printer a few months ago so I headed to my office supply store. I don’t want to publicly bash any company so let’s just say the name of the store was Stooples Office Supply. Moments after I walked in the front door, a well-meaning Stooples sales associate greeted me and began pitching his favorite printer. I took his advice and I bought a Hardly Prints brand printer, which we’ll call the HP Photodumb for short.

Now, I’ve used HP printers a long time and have never had a problem with them until I bought this particular model. It turns out that the Photodumb is a great printer if you want to--you guessed it--print photos. However, if you want to do anything else with it, well, in my opinion, it just stinks .

In fact, the Photodumb printer/fax/copier was lousy at everything I needed it to do, which was printing, faxing, and copying. When I got the printer home and started (trying) to use it, I found out quickly that it was like having a slow, dim-witted teen-aged assistant in my office. (And I should know, because I’ve had a few of those work for me, too.) It took forever to just make a plain copy of a document and when it finally did manage to accomplish this feat, it made a little tah-dah chime as if it just performed a magic trick or something.

Sorry copier. I’ve seen that trick before. I’m not impressed.

Try faxing something on the Photodumb and, well, there goes the rest of your afternoon. The poor little machine would sit there and think forever about its task. It would think and think and think, and then after about 30 minutes, it would think about it some more.

I finally wound up repacking the copier in its box and taking it back to Stooples two months after I bought it, which was way over their return limit. Kudos to Stooples for taking it back and then selling me something that did actually work. If they hadn’t taken it back, my plan was to dump it in their trash can right there in the store. And good riddance.

The point I’m making in telling you all of this is that just because the sales associate meant well in his product suggestion and made a copier sale that day doesn’t mean he did his job. Well-intentioned doesn't mean well-trained.

Good customer service isn't about making the sale. It's about keeping the customer. And you will keep the customer if you meet his needs first. The only way to do that, of course, is to find out what his needs are, and the only way I know to do that is to ask him.

Listen, what kind of a doctor would walk into the examining room and start handing out prescriptions without examining the patient first? If that happened to you, would you ever care to go to that doctor again? I’m thinking probably not.

Customer service works the same way. You have to examine the patient first before making your diagnosis and prescribing your treatment.

I had the misfortune of running into that same Stooples associate yesterday when I went back into their store. I told him I was thinking about ordering a refurbished Dell computer that I found on their Web site.

“Oh, you don’t want to do that,” Stooples Guy said with a smirk.

“Why is that?” I asked.

“Well, first of all, it’s a Dell,” he began.

(Hint: Don’t trash a product your own company sells, even if you don’t like it. There are ways to advise a customer without trashing your own product line!)

Stooples Guy never got to finish his sentence because I was already saying no thanks and walking away. His last copier recommendation was still fresh in my mind and I didn’t want to go there again.

Moreover, he was already making suggestions to me without even knowing what I wanted a computer for. He didn’t know how it would be used, by whom, or in what type of application. He didn’t know that I’ve successfully used Dell products for over a decade and am pretty satisfied with them. He didn’t know my budget goals. In short, he didn’t know anything about me or my needs because he didn’t bother to ask.

I do not exaggerate when I tell you that I was practically running down the aisle to get away from Stooples Guy.

So, what is the lesson here? Always make sure you thoroughly evaluate your customer’s needs first, before making your recommendation.

You build a business by building clientele. You build clientele by building trust. You build trust by putting you customer’s agenda before your own.

One of the reasons that I have been so successful in my speaking career is that I never book events that I‘m not right for. I can’t count the number of times in the past 20 years that I’ve passed on an event after evaluating a client’s needs and learning th at it wasn’t a good match. If I’m not the best person for the job, I’m not going to do it.

For me, it’s about more than just making a dollar for that day. It’s about building a relationship with the customer that extends into the future. It’s about building a reputation in the business community that people can trust.

© 2010 Charles Marshall. Charles Marshall is a nationally known humorous motivational speaker and author specializing in customer service, sales, and personal development. Visit his Web site at http://www.charlesmarshall.net or contact him via e-mail at charles@charlesmarshall.net.