A PLEASANT PLACE
We are all in business to satisfy the customer. Or, at least, we
should be. However, many cleaners don’t understand how the
customer really wants to be satisfied. And they opt for the easiest
way out: discounting.
We are the ones in control of our customers’ experiences. We are
the ones who must redirect their focus towards the entire
experience.
Environmental engineering has become a business in itself. It
involves all of the senses: sight, smell, touch, taste, and sound. It
involves paying attention to every little detail of a customer’s
experience, as they approach your store, in your store, and after they
leave your store and interact with the product and packaging which
you’ve produced.
In an effort to create a total experience for their customers, some
cleaners have hired artists to paint mood setting murals on the walls
of their call-offices. Aurther Weiss of Betty Brite Cleaners in New
Jersey, had murals of he and his wife, and other family members,
painted in an old-time cleaning establishment. When Sid Tuchman
owned Tuchman’s Cleaners in Indiannapolis, he would have artists
paint well-known scenes, from around the city, on the walls of each
new location he opened.
Tomorrow morning, when you come to work, drive up to your
store, as if you were a customer. Park in a customer parking space.
Note if there is ample parking. Note if your building and signage are
well painted. Come back at night and check to see if they’re well lit.
Walk into the front-office and look around like a customer. Is
everything clean, neat, well painted, pleasant and cheerful to look
at? Do the surroundings make you feel good? Would they make you
feel good, even if you weren’t the owner?
Listen to the sounds. Is the noise so loud that no one really wants
to be there? Customers nor employees? Listen more closely. What is
the interaction between customers and employees? Are employees
being friendly and curteous under all circumstances?
Are there offensive odors, or anything else that could make a
customer’s visit less than enjoyable? If the answer is “Yes,” then it’s
time to put on your hardhat and become an Experience Engineer.
