Customer as Emperor
This post is about why customer satisfaction is so important, how to make your customers happy, and how to not let them drive you nuts when they don't like something.
In the world of running your own business, one of the most important things you can do is make sure that your customers are happy with what you're selling. Your customers are also king or queen of the empire that you've been building for them--and believe it or not, they really want to be! They're used to being in charge and having choices--they'll get cranky if they don't get what they want. How do you appease an empire? Here's how:
1. Make your customer feel important.
Customers want to be treated like royalty... and if you're leaving them feeling like anything less than that, you are really missing the point of your job. And the easiest way to make them feel important is to listen when they tell you what they want--and then give it to them! If you're listening, at least 90% of the time, they'll walk away happy (unless the other 10% involves a discount or something.)
2. Be realistic about pricing and give discounts for consistent customers.
In business, people rarely pay full price for anything--they expect you to be reasonable and give them a deal on merchandise they've purchased in the past. This is especially true of service businesses: it's nice to make more money, but it's not worth giving a discount over the course of the year if you think you're going to have customers who are only going to buy from you once every five years. Again though, this goes back to listening--if your customer buys something from you every couple of years, odds are good that he'll buy something even more frequently if he knows that he's getting a discount.
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Customer as Emperor