Re: emotional laborers
Originally Posted by
Caleb Evenson
I love the Vsalon community for its abundance of thoughtful people and their widely varying backgrounds. Thank you all for responding. I am excited to respond to your thoughts when I'm less busy!
Hey, that's what we're here for. Beautiful bikes, enlightened conversation, and the occasional political debate. And ball busting, but that's because a bunch of us know each other in real life and internet ball busting is all we have in the covid era.
On the topic of engaging customers, even the emotionally difficult ones, RW's $0.02 resonates with me.
Originally Posted by
rwsaunders
If you want to be in a service industry imho, open your ears, be prepared to listen and show that your client means something to you beyond a source of income. There are awesome firms out there in all industries and competition is fierce. If you don’t take the time to listen, learn and genuinely care, get in line and become a commodity.
My wife and brother-in-law treat their customers like friends and family. It's hard work. It takes time. Sometimes they get home late because a customer wanted to kill some time before, or even after, dinner at the mall where their shop is. Sometimes the customers talk about anything other than the products they sell. But they listen and engage with sincerity. Why? They've been in business for 75 years. They're the third generation to run the business and, amazingly, they have some second and third generation customers. That level of trust and support was earned and kept over many, many years by making sure customers felt at home in the shop. It's not for everyone and likely isn't possible to treat customers like that in every line of work, but it can certainly set one proprietor apart from the next.
"I guess you're some weird relic of an obsolete age." - davids
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