If you are selling mass-produced goods on the High Street, you might get away with an extended row of happy faces, smiling positively at the customers as they pass the checkout. On the other hand, if you are selling individual and bespoke goods, your relationship with your customer is key to the whole selling process and needs to be established in the lead up to the sale.
In both cases, the seller is in the business of developing relationships with customers, but the priorities for both vendors and customers differ with the size of the organisation … and the nature of the purchase. Large organisations with large numbers of customers can afford to take an aggregated, parallel approach, whereas a one-off maker of tables only gets one go at one customer at any one time.
Large retailers need to treat the whole of the shopping public as a single entity; a one-off maker must treat each customer as an individual. In neither situation can the customer relationship be ignored.
In all cases, a good relationship with your customer takes time and a lot of effort.
What is a good Customer Relationship?
No one is going to disagree if you say that a good relationship with customers is vital if you want repeat business and increased “word-of-mouth” sales.
Customer service on the High Street is about developing and maintaining a pleasant environment for people to spend their money. The goods on sale are generally mass-produced and can be purchased in any number of stores.
For some retailers, this amounts to is going to represent little more than. .
For some retailers, smiling as another shopper runs another basket of goods across the scanner.
