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People can worry less about life if they know about things that can hurt life

Why do most people in Northern California not worry too much about the frequent earthquakes? The reason is because most places in the Bay Area have buildings that can survive most earthquakes. Also, many people know what to do when an earthquake strikes, like not following the typical advice of taking cover under the doors when an earthquake happens; hiding under the door can actually get you killed. Because of being aware that disasters have happened and they will happen, many people feel safe.

Realizing that something can hurt your blog enables you to be well prepared

If you expect something similar to an earthquake to hit your blog, you will be able to easily focus more on what to do instead of spending time panicking. You can simply think of a list of actions you need to take in case different chaotic things happen to your blog. Chaotic things online that can affect your blog and blogging include, among many other things, your domain name getting hijacked, your internet connection going down for hours, your important posts getting deleted by accident, or your site getting hammered by thousands of comments that get mysteriously approved and published on your site for many of your posts.

Protect and enjoy your blog the same way one protects and enjoys life

Once you accept the fact that such things can happen and have even a small idea of how to respond, you will probably worry less about your blog facing such problems in the long run. If we can worry less about our lives simply because of knowing about the bad things that can happen, I am sure we can worry less and react efficiently when problems hit our blogs if we already know that online disasters can affect our blog and blogging too.

What do you think about this? Thank you for reading, I really appreciate it.

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1. Make necessary shopping tools easily available to a customer.

Giving a customer all the necessary tools to find an item and its details increase the chances of that customer actually buying something. A good example of this is the discount signs in retail stores. Many retail stores usually have discounts on multiple items, and most of the times these discounts are not reflected on the actual price tags on items. Price scanners located throughout the store can help customers by allowing them to scan any item under a scanner and find out the exact prices and any eligible discounts. Without such scanners, shoppers have to go through the hassle of hunting down staff members to find out the exact prices for different things. Usually, customers will get fed up of going back and forth between the cashiers and different departments, and may end up not buying something because of the hassle involved.

Similarly, making it a nice experience for customers to browse through a store helps customers relax. Having disorganized aisles and unclear item displays add stress, resulting in customers unconsciously not wanting to shop at such stores in the future. That’s why many people I know prefer going to Target instead of Kmart, because Target is well organized while Kmart, going through a huge reorganization, looks like it survived a nearby tornado. I went to a few Kmarts last week to look for some hard drives. The staff did not even know that they carried hard drives, and it took me a few hours to look through the disorganized and messy electronics section myself to find out that they did carry hard drives, but not the ones I was wanted. I may have a trauma one day thinking of going through the dirty aisles at Kmart again while the staff follows me on a “What does this aisle carry?” discovery spree.

2. Reduce outside stress for customers

Shopping stores should act like shells. The same way the shell of an egg protects the contents and the life within, a shopping store should enclose and protect the customers from any outside factors and stress that may affect their mood in a negative manner. Stress can come from unrelated elements that may actually be seen by the store as incentives to get people to come back to the store more often. Outside noise, outside lights and outside issues should be blocked from the domain of the store itself. If that is not possible, efforts should be made to minimize any outside interference as much as possible. If a customer can feel they are in a different environment when they enter a store, they will feel mentally refreshed. Happy customers now mean happier and satisfied customers in the long run. Stressed-out customers and customers who feel rushed may actually end up avoiding a particular store in the future.

I saw a couple last week in Macy’s where the husband was happily browsing the aisles while telling his wife in great detail what he thought of the dresses she was trying on. Once he sat down in one of the waiting rooms fitted with a TV which showed CNN’s coverage of the world, his mood quickly changed and he got more serious. He tried changing the channel and found out that CNN was the only available channel. After a while, he started offering his wife shorter and more serious responses, like “That’s ugly” and “That looks weird.” In the end, his wife did not buy anything. The couple left the store empty handed, with the husband feeling more serious and the wife feeling a bit sad. All of this happened simply because of Macy’s putting a TV in the waiting room that showed something that many stress-free-wannabe customers would not like to think about when they are shopping and relaxing.

The above two steps can easily fix the issues shown in the examples that follow them. Kmart prices are cheaper than Target for many items, but a stress-free environment that saves time and hassle at Target results in many customers favoring Target over Kmart. I’m looking forward to the progress of the huge reorganizations going on at Kmart, which may result in the shopping experience getting better. Similarly, the husband at Macy’s got moody because of watching some news that he may have had a strong opinion about, and the change in his attitude resulted in the wife not buying anything. If a TV must be put in a store, Macy’s could make available some more channels so that customers could change to a channel they prefer and feel happier at the store even if they do not buy anything.

A stressed customer will not be overall happy with their purchase at a particular store, and that unhappiness is going to be reflected in the long run in the form of fewer purchases at that particular store. Offering a relaxing environment with the least possible resistance to shopping both consciously and unconsciously helps a customer associate happiness with shopping at a certain store. A customer is more likely to be happy about making a purchase at a store if the items they are looking for and any related information is easy to find and the entire shopping experience is stress-free.

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I asked him if the oil change done in that 30K car service would be “of the exact same premium quality as the $19.95, using the same premium oil and the same tools?” He responded with a confident “yes“, telling me that it would be “exactly the same thing you expect from Honda.” I then asked him that if the 30k car service specialists could just do an oil change since, like he said, they were qualified to do that. The look on his face was a very interesting one at that exact moment. He looked at me for about 2 seconds, then opened his mouth to say something, while breathing at the same time, and looked at the side wall without moving his head or saying anything; I’m guessing he regretted answering my question with such enthusiasm. After a few seconds he said that those 30k specialists were required to work on the 30k service customers as a priority, and that they already had customers waiting in line to get a 30k service. I could see no cars waiting anywhere other than the ones that were already being worked upon. I left the place, hoping to get up early tomorrow morning and going to a service center nearby.

What’s up with businesses not wanting to be more flexible? They can use the services they already have, utilize any resources that are available, like those 30k specialists who were not all busy, and use them to have another satisfied customer and a little bit more money? Those mechanics work there fulltime as Honda specialists, and thus get paid by the hour, regardless of how many cars they actually work on. Management could avoid having too many customers on certain days to give the mechanics a break for the rest of the day, which can be understandable on some levels. However, the management staff was willing to put those mechanics to much more work, which would take hours compared to a 20 minute oil change, when that work brought in $130 instead of the $19.95. Thus, if money is the focus, why not get something instead of nothing?

This narrow-minded approach to doing business would work great when you’re selling only one service, or only one specific product which cannot be customized. However, if you have more than one product or service that overlaps with other products or services offered by you, it is wise to teach all staff to be more flexible into customizing a service or a product to meet the need of a customer, who otherwise would not be a customer.

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Imagine owning a small business store where a customer walks in looking for an item that they want under $4. If you don’t have any such item below $4 but have similar items that cost $4.50, which of the following responses would you want to give to that customer?

1. “Sorry, we don’t have anything below $4“
2. “Sorry, we don’t have anything below $4 but we have something close, and it costs only $4.50“

You would probably think that option number 2 above is better of the two answers, offering a customer something close to what they want and also being helpful to them at the same time. Even if the customer does not use that alternate solution, the customer will remember that you were helpful and that you cam came close to fulfilling their requirements, instead of thinking that you did not fulfil their requirements. Most businesses do not realize this. If a customer comes in with a specific request for something, many businesses rarely say anything other than “Sorry, we don’t have that”, thus turning the customer away. Offering alternate solutions to customers can be one of the best methods to have satisfied and loyal customers.

I recently went to a Wendy’s store around 9 pm and was told by an employee standing at the main door that Wendy’s was closed. As I was pulling out of the parking lot, I decided to go through their drive-thru and found out that it was still open, and would remain open until a few hours later. The store employee who told me to basically go away knew I was referring to dining inside the store, though he did not know if I was willing to do a drive-thru or not as an alternate. He thus risked losing me as a customer by not offering me the alternate solution that his store could offer for my needs at that time.

One should reach out to a customer in different ways and not only address their direct needs, but also be creative and thoughtful enough to offer alternates that would satisfy the exact needs of a customer in ways other than what the customer specifies. That involves flexibility and the willingness to think more and taking extra steps to make the customer happy, instead of looking for easy and direct sales all the time.

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