Do you produce a product? Do you know who you your customers are? If so, you work hard to ensure that the message your company sends out is compelling enough to your customer to make them buy your product, right? How about your face to face interactions? Are they consistent with your message and compelling to the consumer? A few years ago when I lived in Virginia, my family and I would frequent a local ice cream parlor every Sunday afternoon. The shop was family owned and the owner would usually serve us personally. Rocky Road with side of political commentary was his special. Ice Cream Man knew I was a stay at home mother when he launched into a rant about the state of the economy one afternoon. "I'm a small business owner", he bragged. "It's producers like me that keep our economy going." Then glancing at me and my two sons, their little faces sticky with marshmallow and melty fudge chips, he dismissed my two meager contributions to the world by stating with a wave of his hand, "You're consumers." At that, I swung around in my stool so he could get a good profile of my 7 month pregnant belly, swollen with son number 3 and stated, "I disagree. I'm a producer, too... I produce consumers. Several of which used to buy your product."
The following week, we began frequenting a different ice cream parlor.
1 comment:
What a great story and a wonderful retort! Awareness, consistency, and empathy are powerful and necessary tools for a company and its brand.
Check out this story from Harvard Business Review - "The Best Way to Understand Your Customers".
It sounds like the ice cream shop owner got his lesson in understanding customers after he lost your business!
Post a Comment