Deliver The Goods

Customer service sometimes needs to extend beyond the walls of your store. A popular perk offered by many retailers who are excelling in customer service is delivery of goods to customers. Maybe this can’t be done for everyone but overwhelmingly people polled for this article said offering delivery services is a must to differentiate your store from the mass merchants.

"Our delivery service fits right into our customer service," said Greenburg whose stores offer same-day delivery. "We’re giving a service to contractors that the competition isn’t even thinking of. You need to do the little extras for this group of customers. We’re doing it and we’re growing exponentially because of it." "We bend over backward to deliver products,” added Russell. "We’ll drive to the job site if we have to." Boyajian said even if you don’t technically offer delivery service, you might want to bend the rules for some customers. "If a large construction company working on a large job comes by your paint store and asks if you offer delivery, are you going to say no? You definitely need to set parameters but you also need to stretch the rules a little to better serve those big clients."

Miller Paint allows its sales personnel to stretch the rules but just once. Dearborn explained that when a new hire comes aboard, Dearborn hands him or her a "Get Out Of Jail Free" card (see accompanying image). He explained this card allows the salesperson to do whatever necessary to provide top-notch customer service.

In once instance, Dearborn said a new hire just completed a four-gallon sale to a customer. The customer, not realizing she would be buying that much at the time, had walked six blocks from her home to the store. So, the employee walked the four gallons the six blocks to the customer’s home, then came back to the store and presented the manager with the "Get Out Of Jail Free" card. "The message is—customer service is part of our culture,” Dearborn said. "We’re encouraging employees to be actively involved in this process."

Mix It Up

Along with knowledge of products and delivery service, another customer-service area mentioned was providing accurate color matches. Customers only are so forgiving. They might forgive you for a mistake once in awhile if the rest of your customer service is in order. But, if they want a specific color, don’t expect them to come back to you if you can’t get it matched perfectly. No amount of smiles, greetings and deliveries offset giving the customer what he or she wants. "You really can differentiate yourself from the competition with your tinting capabilities," said Greenburg. "We can tint any stain, too," Greenburg added that he has tinting professionals who do nothing but accurate color matches all day. They don’t work the sales floor and ell—they just do what they do best. He said this enhances his stores’ efficiency as well.

"A lot of stores can color-match but not as well as we can," said Russell. "We’ve been in business 28 years and I can match anything. That keeps the customers coming back."

Boyajian warned that storeowners need to be aware that most independent retailers are adept at color matching. He said stores that hang their hat just on color matching and don’t pay attention to the other areas of customer service already discussed are going to be in trouble. He said accurate tinting is important but retailers shouldn’t be so quick to think no one else can do it.

Dealing With Difficult Customers

While the majority of experiences with customers are going to be pleasant, there’s always that difficult customer who makes trouble for your sales staff. The saying goes, "The customer is always right," but at Gold-meier’s store, that’s not the case. "The customer is not always right," Goldmeier bluntly said. "But, we must do what we can to keep the customer happy and our company profitable. This means we have to look at the long-term relationship with this customer. If the customer ordered one quart of paint and they say we made the wrong finish, we check the order and in fact the customer goofed, we have a decision to make." He said he has to decide whether to eat the quart and remake a new one for free or possibly offer a discount and have the customer buy a new quart. Or, if the customer generally is a good customer, that comes into play as well.

"Notice that we can still say the customer goofed," he said. "The employees do not get as worn down or depressed. When the customer is always right, the employee is always wrong. Employees get defensive and depressed after awhile. Our way allows the employee the satisfaction of not being the error maker and yet aiding the customer to correct the problem."

Goldmeier said the second half of his business approach with difficult customers centers of the best way for him to make money, which is the motivation to deal with some of these problem shoppers. "I am in business to make money. The best way I know how to make money is offering great service. This idea keeps my focus on the long-term goal, not the short-term. If I remember that I need to make money and the customer in front of me is a crotchety person, then I will focus on providing the most patience and giving the best answers, knowing I got to make my buck. Sometimes it means having someone else help the person. Sometimes it means saying no to someone."

And, if you don’t think a difficult customer is a potential problem, consider the following statistics from the aforementioned "Up Against The Wal-Marts" book: for every customer who bothers to complain, there are 26 others who remain silent; the average "wronged" customer will tell eight to 16 people (more than 10 percent will tell more than 20 people); and 91 percent of unhappy customers will never buy from you again.

Offer Training & Evaluations

Before sales staff knows what they should be doing when a customer comes into the store, you, as the storeowner, need to have proper training in place so everyone is on the same page when it comes to customer service. At Greenburg’s Ring’s End stores, all new employees go through Vision Planning, a third-party customer service training. "This provides the same training across all departments," said Cabot’s Churchill. "Everyone is then on the same page and has the same direction as to how best to serve the customer whether it’s in the office, on the floor, or in the yard."

Albert-Caracatsanis added that employees aren’t to blame for poor customer service if they aren’t trained properly. She said it’s best to have one of your best staff members do the training, so the new employee doesn’t begin by taking on bad habits. She said a lot of businesses aren’t using their best personnel to train, which puts the new employee already in hole.

Another area that Albert-Caracatsanis stressed is to provide evaluations to staff based on their customer service. There may not be a concrete way to measure customer service but storeowners should attempt to attach rewards to how they believe staff members are performing.

"Offering positive recognition and/or a reward program is good for employee morale," she said. "In our program, we can provide evaluations yearly or quarterly and we’ll let you know how your employees fared." She said storeowners then use that information to come up with a scoring system that provides rewards based on the best service.

"Employees really look forward to seeing their scores. It definitely helps improve customer service in your store," she added. Dearborn said at Miller the company is working toward a Web-based online survey for customers to complete, detailing their customer-service experience. He said the hope is that retail customers and contractors both will take the time to complete the survey. "The survey only takes about four minutes and we’ll provide some incentive for them to complete the survey. It’s rich data for us. We think we offer everything but if the customer doesn’t believe that—it’s not good to them or us."

Do It Better

Goldmeier provided a final thought to retailers who are looking to revamp their customer-service efforts. "Care and pay attention to the customer. Listen to the questions they are asking. Do they really need that eggshell or will semi-gloss work better? Is the boss willing to drop off a few gallons in his personal vehicle on the way home? Is the customer really not going to get the best quality with what they are buying? Will a cheaper product work better in certain cases, saving them money now, but having them shop by you in the long run?"