How shopping for a dress at LK Bennett taught me an interesting marketing lesson

A girl in search of a kick-ass outfit for a series of important forthcoming meetings, shopping alone save for a restless 13 month old baby who would rather be anywhere but her buggy is a special breed. This was me on Saturday!

So, there I was, a little on the fraught side, but ready to attack the mission at hand. What I needed was a helpful steer in the right direction, then efficient service as I had a limited window of opportunity before the task became mission:impossible (I refer you back to the buggy comment above).

One of my mantras at Mzuri is to treat all clients as individuals and each project as unique so we can tailor a bespoke solution that achieves the very best outcome for our clients’ needs. This is a philosophy that the shop assistant at LK Bennett who served me on Saturday could have usefully taken on board.

She did so many things brilliantly, that if she had dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s it would have made for a sublime shopping experience, but a few basic errors in my customer experience let it down. It led me to think about how it is the small things that can make all the difference to our experience of and perception of the companies that we patronise, so thought I’d jot down my top tips resulting from this less than perfect shopping experience:

1) Ask the right questions and listen to the answers. I wanted a dress and possibly a coat. I didn’t want persistent attempts to be upsold a bag, scarf, jacket, shoes and boots. One gentle introduction of these options would have been fine (I want to know the options available to me that would enhance my basic objective!), but she was a woman on a mission and it put me off.

2) Don’t change the keenness of your approach when you realise the customer only wants the dress may be persuaded on the coat, but it’s an absolute no on the other stuff. Engage my interest, show your skill at combining other elements of an outfit and respect my clear signals that I’m not here to break the bank by buying it all; exceed my expectations by not taking the traditional ‘I’m gonna sell you as much as I can’ approach and you’ll win more of my respect. And probably have me saving up my pennies to rush back and get the boots when I can afford them, and telling my friends how great the shop is (instead I’m blogging about the fact that it irritated me!).

3) Make sure you ‘hold the baton’ until the transaction is complete. Don’t dump my clothes (that you handled so carefully and presented so beautifully in the changing rooms) on the counter then rush off to serve another customer while I stand at the checkout with an irate child and I just want to pay and get on the move. I stood for 5 minutes waiting to pay for the goods. If I hadn’t needed the dress for a specific meeting, I would have left.

4) If you offer a discount (20% off splashed across the windows), then make sure this is applied at the till without having to be reminded (when I’d realised half way down the high street!) then having to wait another 5 minutes while you get the store manager to come and process my refund.

I left feeling slightly let down that I’d gone from feeling a million dollars in the changing room in the lovely dress, to feeling a bit annoyed at having been ‘processed’ in a horrible salesy way.

In telling this little tale of my shopping adventure, I have concluded that customer service is a bit like an essay – it has to have a beginning, a middle and an end to be great. And if you neglect one element, the whole thing is much less persuasive and doesn’t leave the lasting impression that it could have.