Scott Porad

Over the weekend, poked my head in to an art gallery.  Inexpensive art ranging in prices from $25-250.  Art that I liked and would have hung on my wall.

Was the only person in the gallery for between 7-10 minutes.  Sales person at the desk must have known I was there because the there was an auto-doorbell when someone entered.  I dropped something in the doorway, so I came in and out twice.  Sales person didn’t say a peep…didn’t acknowledge my existence…didn’t ask if I wanted to buy something…and I left without any engagement when just saying “hello” would have been so easy.

Pro Tip: if you have a product that you’re trying to sell, the very easiest way to increase your sales conversion rate is to ask your potential customers if they would like to make a purchase.  There’s a reason the Gap and Walmart have greeters…it’s because they work and they pay for themselves dozens of times over.  The same applies to the web: if you’re selling something, make sure you’re asking your customers if they want to buy it.

I Know Another Secret…How to Sell Your Service:

On Saturday, I needed to send something overnight for Monday arrival.  The reason is unimportant.  I called information to get the phone number of my local FedEx location because I needed to know by what time I needed to drop off my letter.  That location is probably 4 miles from my house.

I called information, got the number for my local location, but was forwarded to the general all-in-one FedEx automated phone system.  Oy!  Had to go through a whole ton of prompts to find my location again, but gave up after a few minutes because I couldn’t find the exact one.

Turned on the computer, go to FedEx.com, use the store locator…same problem, but ultimately I find the store…doesn’t seem to have the info I need.  Or, at least, it’s not obvious.

So, I go to Google, do some Googling, find the actual local phone number.  More prompts, but finally I get to “Press 9 to speak to a store representative.”

“Hi, FedEx Office, this is Kevin, how may I help you?”  I proceed to to have a 45-60 second conversation with Kevin who tells me that I need to get my letter there by 4pm.  Problem solved, thank you Kevin.

Pro Tip: Good customer service and good customer experience starts with treating your customers like humans when they’re in the information gathering phase of deciding whether or not to use your service.  Maybe FedEx saved a few dollars by having a giant automated phone system, but they wasted a ton of my time.  In other words, they reduced their cost, but not the actual cost of their service…my total cost was the same.  To boot, if I hadn’t been a creative Googler I probably wouldn’t have been able to figure out if their service solved my problem.  Same goes on the web: design your web site for humans and it’s much more likely they’re going to buy your service.