Are you listening to your customers?

One of the major things that have been bothering me lately is the lack of communication and the unpleasant behaviour of certain people in different business industries.

My question is - Do you listen to your customers or clients at all? Do you listen to them just to reply or you are trying to understand their needs and what they really want?!

This might be a simple question, but many people and businesses fail on this point. The problem usually lies in employees of certain businesses who don't listen or take attention when they interact and engage with their clients due to a lack of interest through different outcomes (payment, bad day, insufficient training, etc).

So, when a customer engages the employee and receives bad service due to "miscommunication" which happens often, they can react only in two ways - Be very harsh about it or Accept the situation and take the best out of it!

Now to come back to my story and the experience I had yesterday morning... Hmm...

Anyway, I came to the petrol station to acquire a nice cup of coffee and a quick "chicken roll" (sandwich) from the deli. The girl behind the deli was not focused, walking around the place pretending to look "busy" and leaving me to stand there for quite some time. Finally realising I am still standing there, she decided to put a smile on her face and engage with me. She tried to pick up where she already made mistake and tried to fix the situation by starting the communication with me by asking those simple questions such as - Which kind of bread would you like? Would you like butter or mayonnaise and of course the most important question of it all - Which kind of chicken would you like? Plain or Spicy?

So me being me, raised by my father to be polite and nice to everyone equal way (even tho they don't deserve it) I replied with a respective voice answering all of her questions and giving her my last answer, which was I wanted a Plain Chicken for my roll. Of course, watching her moving around trying to focus on my answers (which couldn't be more simple) and working on finishing my order, I went to grab that well-deserved cup of coffee. In the meantime, she already had my roll wrapped up and laying there on top of the counter waiting for me. I came to the cashier, politely paid for the roll and coffee and went away. Of course, when I opened it I realised she made mistake. Instead of plain chicken, I got a spicy one. Did she do it on purpose or it was a genuine mistake, I will never know...

If I wanted to be one of those nasty customers I would go back, shouted at her and requested a refund for the roll, but I wasn't raised that way so I sat down and eat the roll I had and tried to make the best out of it. :)

The point of the story is that people do make mistakes and usually that is due to a lack of listening or poor communication between you, your employee and the customer. If you are running a business please watch for these small things, as they could be a "big issue" for someone, and one bad voice can harm you and your business pretty badly.

Have a great day.

Regards,

Srdan KO