A few weeks ago, I attempted to buy a product at the local store. I like to support them. They didn’t have what I needed in the store closest to me, but did at two different stores ten miles away. I was previously told to get it the fastest, have it shipped to the store. So I did.
A week later, the product had still not been shipped and I reached out to customer service. After they went through the script, I asked if they could reach out to the store and ask them to ship it. They told me it was not in stock and I’d either have to wait or cancel the order. I asked them to cancel it and ordered the product on Amazon while waiting for the cancellation to be processed. I hung up and called the store to see if the customer service rep lied to me. He had, it was in stock. And my order from Amazon arrived from the east coast two days later.
The experience was a prime example of a sales repellent department in action. Many blame Amazon for their sales falling short while seldom looking inward to see what is getting in the way of doing business with customers. Taking a hard look at how easy or hard it is to do business with you will be gold.
Do you have a sales repellent department? If so, it is time to make a change before your customers do!