What comes to mind for me when I look at the variety of the transactions I do every day, I realize that many of the routine choices I make are because I like the people providing the service and habitually buy from them. While rehabbing homes, I usually ate at the same diner where I knew the wait staff, I shopped at Menards where I felt treated much better (and consequently knew more staff than Home Depot or Lowes--their turnover seemed far too much), used the same subcontractors, etc.
This comes under the phrase, "Be easy to do business with" (just being easy going and likeable), and takes it a step further to making a personal contact. The personal connection is greatly enhanced when there is an expertise and/or solution conveyed in the transaction. ("Have you tried our {Cobb Salad}--the guys love it", or "For those materials, try this adhesive for waterproofing".)
The personal connection goes a step beyond the economics and reaches into the customer's emotions. This has the customer feeling that this is a great experience, that they have an ally solving their problems, and only incidentially about the products themself.
Are there direct connections to web sites and phone calls? Try to be creative about that. Can consultative-type selling be digitally replicated with phone banks and AI? It looks like the better the "know your customer" data that goes in, the better the output and result.
From an experience earlier this week, i was on a chat line answering questions, and the answer to the next question was already in my previous answer. Were they checking to make sure they heard it correctly? It did not seem like it. It did seem like they never read the reply because they were working too many threads. I never did get a return email to answer my question (new account), but they did want my account number.
Mark, Thanks for hosting this and posing interesting questions!
Mark,
What comes to mind for me when I look at the variety of the transactions I do every day, I realize that many of the routine choices I make are because I like the people providing the service and habitually buy from them. While rehabbing homes, I usually ate at the same diner where I knew the wait staff, I shopped at Menards where I felt treated much better (and consequently knew more staff than Home Depot or Lowes--their turnover seemed far too much), used the same subcontractors, etc.
This comes under the phrase, "Be easy to do business with" (just being easy going and likeable), and takes it a step further to making a personal contact. The personal connection is greatly enhanced when there is an expertise and/or solution conveyed in the transaction. ("Have you tried our {Cobb Salad}--the guys love it", or "For those materials, try this adhesive for waterproofing".)
The personal connection goes a step beyond the economics and reaches into the customer's emotions. This has the customer feeling that this is a great experience, that they have an ally solving their problems, and only incidentially about the products themself.
Are there direct connections to web sites and phone calls? Try to be creative about that. Can consultative-type selling be digitally replicated with phone banks and AI? It looks like the better the "know your customer" data that goes in, the better the output and result.
From an experience earlier this week, i was on a chat line answering questions, and the answer to the next question was already in my previous answer. Were they checking to make sure they heard it correctly? It did not seem like it. It did seem like they never read the reply because they were working too many threads. I never did get a return email to answer my question (new account), but they did want my account number.
Mark, Thanks for hosting this and posing interesting questions!