I never knew you were gone

Because you never let me know you were there

As we moved back home to Arkansas, Marilyn decided she wanted a stadium seat. She had seen one at a game the previous week and asked the seat owner where the seat was purchased.

Within days she was in the store and found the identical seat. The person in the shop told Marilyn that for only a couple of dollars, she could have her name imprinted on the back of the seat along side the school mascot. The personalized seat would be ready in a few days and the shop would call to let her know when the stadium seat was ready for pickup.

And with that, Marilyn has enjoyed her purchase.

Jump forward to some ten months into the pandemic, we are driving by the same shop only to see a “for rent” sign in the building. We ask each other to confirm that this is the building where the stadium seat was purchased. After confirming the location, we wonder how long the business has been gone.

Of course, the shop sold more than stadium seats as on our initial visit we saw several items we would consider for future purchases. However, as the shop is now closed, purchases are no longer an option.

We expect there will be plenty who will say the business was a victim of the pandemic. While there is no denying the pandemic COULD have been a factor if the business closed in the past ten months, there could be other reasons. And if the shop closed earlier than that, the pandemic was definitely not a factor.

The title of this article shares our thoughts of the business; “I never knew you were gone”. We have no idea of when the business closed. In spite of our having seen items we liked, once we left the business after that initial visit the store was forgotten. What was missing?

The shop did not send anything with us on either of our visits. Perhaps the business had a Facebook page. Perhaps they sent newsletters and new product announcements to their customers; just not to us.
With any business, there are many opportunities and ways to stay connected with the customer. This business used none even as they had all of our contact information. Hence the second part of the title of this article; “You never let me know you were there”.

My observation is this business operated in the same manner that people do in their personal life; we place little value on items which are plentiful. In the case of business, when the customers are plentiful, we seem to place little value on keeping them. If we lose a customer we expect we can easily replace them.

Those of us reading this magazine in the USA, what if we had the population of Canada? The 328 million potential customers would only be 38 million. This means that if you have 100 customers you would now have less than 12.

How much effort would we put forward to keep a customer? What effort would be put forth to earn a customer’s business and their response of sharing their contact information?

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