Communication equals customer service

This past weekend my sister and I took my niece to one of Winnipeg's finer clothing establishments in search of a dress for the grade eight grad dance. We had a lot of fun oohing and ahing over the fabulous dresses at Swank Boutique - mostly because every single item my niece tried on looked amazing on her. But what made it even more fun was the customer service we received while at the boutique.

Randy was the guy who helped us out and he was doing what most of us strive to do every day in our working lives - communicating. First, he observed our shopping 'style'. Neither my sister nor I, nor my niece for that matter, like to have sales clerks in our face or stalking us while we try to decide if there is anything in the store we want to take to the dressing room. Randy gave us space while we toured around, pulling out various dresses for my niece to look at.

Once we had a couple of possibilities, Randy immediately set us up with a changing room and then offered his opinion when my niece tried on the first dress (it looked fabulous, of course). He asked a few questions about what the dress was for, observed how she seemed to be feeling in what was picked for her, and then he started bringing a variety of other dresses for her to try on. Notable in this was that he mostly stuck to the sales racks, which is where we had focused our initial search. I don't know how he did it, but he found great dresses that we completely overlooked.

Then, once she was down to just a few choices, he made it about her. Not about mom. Not about auntie. About the 14 year old who was going to be wearing the dress and what did she like and how did she feel. I was really impressed. We left the store with a dress that my niece absolutely loves and that she can wear for more than the one occassion. It wasn't the dress I would have chosen - good thing since I'm 30 years older than her! But she's happy and that's because Randy at Swank used excellent communications skills to provide outstanding customer service.

The moral of this post is that communications is EVERYWHERE and something we should all be striving to master, not just those of us who have the word 'communications' in our job titles.