Great customers
One of the great advantages of having a store (especially in case of brick and mortar stores) is that you usually deal with great customers.
I don’t know about you but, I owned several stores in two different countries and I found that the majority of customers are nice people who just want to be treated nicely.
They are people like you and me. If you smile, they’ll smile back.
Not so great customers
However, there’s a particular kind of customer that makes you want to scream, close the door and throw away the key.
These kind of customers are usually in their forties or fifties. They can be men or women, but there are more men than women.
They ask you for a product and you say “Sorry, we don’t have that product” and they shoot: “why not?”
You don’t know what to say. If you tell something like “It’s the first time someone asks for this product”. And they think “Is he calling me a freak?” And they fight back.
If you say something nice like “We never thought of that” they say “but you should, you would be selling millions”.
At a certain point they will certainly ask “Are you the owner?”
Now, this is the trickiest question. I know we shouldn’t lie to our customers, but this is an emergency. If you don’t lie, you’ll get a full 1 hour course of marketing and management.
And if you lie. Well, he’ll tell you that your boss (yes, you) is a complete idiot and you should start searching for a new job.
Sometimes we need to meet this “I know everything” customers in order to appreciate the other customers.
I met wonderful people. I made friends, and I still remember them. If you pretend to own a store, you´ll be happy to talk to 99.99% of customers. And the other 0.01%, try to forgive them. Maybe they have big problems in their life.
Someday I’ll talk about another type of customer, the “my cousin works in a public department and if he wants, he can close your store for good” customers.