“Respect my authorita,” proclaims Eric Cartman throughout many episodes of South Park.
And while I’m not an arrogant person – confident yes – but arrogant not really. I had an experiene yesterday that simply blew my mind.
Shopping downtown, as I love to do, for tires I found out that the Blazer had an issue that would require about another $700 in repairs. Now, I’m frustrated as the total cost of these repairs has sky rocketed past the $1000 plateau.
My wonderful in-laws were buying the tires for us as my birthday present and when they called in the credit card payment told the store to “put a ribbon on the invoice.”
“When you come back for the repairs, then we’ll get you the bow.”
What?
Here is the problem with that statement. You have ASSUMED that my business is yours. And once you make that assumption, you stop trying to keep me as a customer. And in that 20 seconds it took him to make that statement, I was gone. My $500 wasn’t enough to satisfy their desire, they wanted all $1,200 without any effort.
Unless they read this blog, they’ll never know. I smiled and let it ride. Walked out the door and dialed Gretchen on the cellular phone and the cycle of “frustration” begain.
So why are you broadcasting it to the masses?
Because this is the key to the survival of downtown Delaware. We have some businesses that are assuming that because they are in downtown they should be shopped. And to a point, I’ll honor that request. However, you have to WIN the customer over every time s/he shops you. This is not as hard as it sounds, it eventually gets to a point where you just don’t have to “lose” my business.
However, you have to keep in mind that every buyer in your shop has an option for where to spend your money. They could go to a direct competitor or an indirect one, but the problem is that you’ve lost ther cash flow into your company.
Keep it in mind next time that front door opens.
