Customer Experience: An Observation

In these days of a vastly over saturated Wedding Photography market place, the stories i hear of poor customer experiences when dealing with wedding photographers, both full and part time, is quite eye opening.

It goes without saying that a client will remember you for your attitude and approach as much as the quality of the photography produced for them. Over the years i have heard so many comments from clients both good and bad. Some are just unbelievable and are so far fetched that its almost hard to believe that they are true!

Of late this has got me thinking about my experiences when searching out a service or product outside of the world of wedding photography.

We have recently changed cars. The quality of and attitude of various car show rooms and salesmen was quite startling!

After some research we decided we wanted to change our super charged C-Class Mercedes for something a little more economical. So we decided to go for a diesel and cut the list down to 3 cars from different marques; all considered to have good badges.

The first dealership we walked into was quiet but basically completely ignored us as we took a look at their offerings. After 20 minutes, we decided that if we weren't important enough to them we would take our money elsewhere.

At the second dealership, Karen had printed off a page showing the actual car she wanted to try and buy. How easy is that for the salesman i ask myself? The guy was interested but suggested we tried his demonstrators first. We went along with him and after driving both diesel and petrol versions we said we wanted to look at the one we had uncovered from their website as it seemed to fit the bill on spec, colour etc.

He then ignored us and went on to produce quotes for cars that were £10k more than we wanted to spend. So once he had finished hIs sales pitch, we asked if we could just go with the car we fancied. At this he just said "go home and i will get back to you". UNBELIEVABLE!!

So off to the third dealership (my personal first choice). This was our local Mercedes dealership.

We were approached by Scott (who had sold us the C Class) who asked how he could help? We explained what sort of model and price we were considering, he gave us the keys to the demonstrator "for as long as we needed".

On our return an hour later, we were shown over a series of vehicles, chose the one that fitted the bill (not the most expensive one he showed) and were made to feel the most important clients he had that day. He made the whole buying experience easy and a pleasure.

His manager came out of his office to thank us for deciding to go with them again and the MD even greeted us as she walked though the showroom.

Once the car was ready for collection we were invited to come over, treated like gold dust and even had a couple of courtesy calls as well as the standard questionnaires of customer satisfaction from Mercedes, since to ensure everything was ok.

MEANWHILE.....

Dealer no2 who had told us to "go home" called a fortnight later to see if we had given anymore thought to the cars he wanted to sell us and never mentioend the car we had told him we wanted to buy......

Dealer no1 never saw us again.


So the lessons i have learned from our recent car purchase are:

1: Treat every client as if they are the most important client you have ever had, THEY ARE!

2: Ask and listen to what your client's requirements are.

3: Don't try to hard and over sell.

4: Make the whole buying/selling experience as easy and enjoyable as possible for your clients.

5: No matter how much or little your clients are spending always treat them well and the same.

6: Remember that good customer service and experience doesn't end once they'v paid their money and walked out the door.

You can view my wedding galleries here.