What is your logic now?

Your customer service policy might not provide service

There are business lessons to be experienced every day. This summer I attended a church service on a mountain in my home state of Arkansas. This is a state park in which the residents and guests use the pavilion for the service.

When it is time for announcements, they also take care of any business matters the group has. The issue during this service was the purchase of a new amplifier, microphone and speakers for the group. Money had been saved and two people were assigned the task of going shopping for the new equipment.

The shoppers reported they went into the town below to the locally owned music store to look at the items available. The report was that no purchase had been made. It seems as they shopped, they explained the concern for the way the sound would reflect in the building that was being used. The building is very cavernous as well as having odd angles for the ceiling. The walls and floor were made of hardwood. If those in attendance could not hear the person speaking, they would have made the purchase incorrectly.

They asked about taking the equipment, or someone from the store bringing the equipment to the pavilion to give it a “test run” to make sure they had made the correct choice. The request would make sense to most of us. Who would want to spend that much money only to find it was the wrong choice?

If the pieces of equipment sampled were not correct, notes would be taken and another selection would be made.

And that is where the transaction began to go wrong. The two individuals stated the shop owner said that would not work. Testing the equipment at the pavilion (as compared to someone asking to test the equipment in the shop) would mean the equipment was now used and would have to be sold as such meaning the shop owner would not make any money on that that particular piece of equipment.

Of course, someone in the service asked for the name of the shop that was visited. In sharing the name of the shop, the two individuals doing the shopping commented, “Gee. It would be easier to shop on Amazon. You have thirty days to return something to them, and they deliver the merchandise to you.”

Now you have everyone in this group having heard of the experience. Even those of us who are not regular Amazon shoppers understood their concern and their logic for second guessing their choice of where to shop.

This scenario, while not unique, is an example of how one business beats another. A business determines what a competition cannot do or will not do for their customers. The business simply calculates the cost of providing this service as well as the frequency of needing to provide this service.

Sometimes a business spends more time figuring out how to stop that one person from taking advantage of them than they spend determining how they can better serve the ninety-nine that just want to do business.

As a lifelong participant in a family business, and a continuing student of the B2B and B2C market, this writer has seen a lot of changes. One factor that remains consistent; every successful new business has researched the aspect previously mentioned – what the competition will not do or cannot do.

When they determine what they can add to the experience, or the challenge they can eliminate, they exploit it to the advantage of the customer as well as the advantage of their business.

Amazon will not be the death of any small business. The small business that loses will find enough ways on their own to lose to whatever becomes the next wave in competition.

When we chose to not adapt to the next change in business, what is our logic now for growing our business?  

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