19 January 2005

The Sales Lady Cometh

Okay, you're a sales lady. You come to my office building, ignore the "No Solicitors" sign next to the outer door, walk up the stairs, and knock on the door of the lone law office. I let you in because I'm not sure who you are (could be a family member of a client or even a client who's never come see me before). Your foot in the door, you make your pitch for the office supply company you work for. I agree to buy 4 boxes of copier-printer paper but tell you to your face that I will need to see how well that works before I buy anything else. All-in-all it's cordial and you have developed a potential customer.

Why do you end your visit with this statement: "I usually come back and check to make sure everything got delivered the next business day and that the customer is satisfied. But this place is so far out in the boonies that I'm not coming back out here."

What could possibly possess you to think that this is a good way to build customer relations? You've kept me at my office 20 minutes past the presumptive closing time (yeah, I know that I never get out by 5 p.m. but she didn't) and now you've insulted the place where I have my office and where my residence is located. On top of which, when did suburbs which are 30 minutes from downtown Richmond become the boonies? Yeesh. Get some perspective. 'Cuz you should get something for your efforts and you didn't get a long term customer.

1 comment:

Windypundit said...

I can understand that she might not want to travel that far to confirm a small order, but why on earth would she tell you that? Why would she tell you that she's not giving you good service like other customers get?

This reminds me of an old boss of mine who once told a customer that our bid for a project had to be a little high because we were trying to make up for the $120,000 we lost on the last project we did for them. In other words, not only did he tell the customer he was sticking it to them so he could get his numbers even, he also told them that how much we had padded the bid, which made it pretty easy for them to bargain us down.