Thanks to everyone who is reading this series and who has subscribed to the FEEDBURNER in the upper left hand corner of the blog. All you need to do is enter your email address, it just takes a moment. My next tip actually comes from a recent experience at a custom T-shirt store. The store is called All that JAS and is located in Elon, North Carolina.
DAY 5: Provide An Experience for Your Customers
What do I mean by this? It can be something as simple as calling the customer by their name. Of course you have to go to the trouble of learning the names of your customers, but once you know someone’s name, use it. You can also make an effort to greet customers as they walk into your store. You don’t want to scare them away by being too aggressive, but a friendly welcome or hello is always a good start. At the JAS store the owner has positioned her order-taking desk at the front of the store so that new customers can be greeted even while working with another customer. Being greeted is an experience most people enjoy. Another “experience” thing that they do is positioning their heat press in the store, so that becomes an attraction to shoppers and makes them curious as to how they could have something heat printed. Getting a custom shirt made can be a really fun experience. If you don’t have a store, you can do something similar on the phone. Consider every call is an opportunity to provide a fun buying experience for your customer. If someone calls to ask “can you print on black t-shirts?” don’t just say yes and hang up. Take the opportunity to find out more about their custom decoration needs, let them know that you can print on just about anything and you would be happy to show them some samples. Get them talking about what they want to do. Many times customers don’t know what they want. For example, the JAS store specializes in Greek wear for fraternities and sororities. However we weren’t shopping for Greek wear. The helpful sales clerk let us know that any of the designs shown on custom Greek shirts could also be done with the school name, that the custom shirt didn’t have to feature Greek lettering. This was an ideal example of helping a customer understand all the different custom decorating options that might not be so obvious. And it was a really great experience.