Satisfied customers are a perpetual lip-to-lip advertisement.
“Help your customer to buy. Don’t merely sell to him.”
A Quaker merchant who had made a fortune in Liverpool, when asked how he had made it, replied, “By a single article of trade in which every one may deal who pleases—civility.”
This self-same “article of trade” has been the making of the celebrated Bon Marché in Paris. The clerks in this famous establishment are instructed to show people, whether customers or not, every possible consideration. Strangers in Paris are invited to visit the Bon Marché, and are taken in hand the moment they enter the store by those who can speak their language, are shown over the whole place, and every possible attention paid to them, without the slightest influence being brought upon them to purchase. A similar courtesy is shown visitors in many well-known American concerns.
It is the service we are not obliged to give that people value most. Everybody knows that the salesman is supposed, at least, to treat a customer decently; but the over-plus of service, the extra courtesy and kindness, the spirit of accommodation, the desire to be obliging, the patience and helpfulness in trying to render the greatest possible service—these are the things customers appreciate most highly, and these are just the things that tie customers to certain houses.
Whether you are a traveling salesman or selling things behind a counter, nothing will add more to your success than the practice of that helpful courtesy which is dictated by the heart rather than the head, or by mere convention.
Doing a customer a good turn has proved the turning point in many a career. Nothing will make such a good impression upon an employer as the courtesy of an employee who has so ingratiated himself into the hearts of his customers, and so endeared himself to them, that they will always seek him out and wait to buy from him even at great inconvenience to themselves. Every employer knows that a clerk who attracts trade is worth ten times as much as one who drives it away.
It is said that when John Wanamaker went into business, he paid a salesman thirteen hundred dollars the first year, which was equal to all the rest of his capital. He did this because of the man’s wonderful personality, his ability to attract trade, to please and hold customers so that they would come again.
I know a man who has built up a big business largely because he is always trying to accommodate his customers, to save them expense, or to assist them in buying things which he does not carry.
To-day our large business houses make a great point of pleasing customers, of obliging them and catering to their comfort in every possible way. Waiting-rooms, reading-rooms, with stationery, attendants, and even music and other forms of entertainment, are furnished by many of them.