Re-Thinking Your Business
1. What do our customers expect from us?
2. What are we prepared to give our customers at this very moment?
When in the process of re-thinking or re-engineering you must think about your business from a "ground-up" perspective. This means asking different questions from the usual. Most people are inclined to ask themselves these simple questions such as, "How can we make our products and aspects of our services better?" The firs question that should be asked is actually, "Are these services and products even necessary to our customers satisfaction?" While consulting a small baby clothing boutique in the Kansas City area I discovered that many of the answers to their problems were right up under them. They told me in a pre-interview that customers never complained about the product however, they didn't get very many repeat customers. Of course this means that rather than take the time complain customers simply decided not to come back to the establishment. The only problem with this is that customers shared their concerns and complaints with others who decided no to patronize the business also. We could have went the usual route and set up a customer complaint box that would sit empty because nobody would use it, but I decided on a different method. I suggested that the business not only sell baby clothes,but offer refreshments and talk to customers. I also suggested that they rent out the store from time to time for baby showers and give one customary item to the mother every shower. This made shopping at the boutique more of an experience than a shopping trip. If the baby shower went over well then that reputation spread out throughout the community and customer base. The will make the place a hang-out for their primary target customers and not just a place they pass through. With this much access to the customers the business can tap into any complaints and fix them on the spot.
