The customer’s viewpoint.

One of the best stories I ever ran across on how to drive the customer’s perception on the service they received was something I read years ago in Readers Digest. It detailed the story of two clerks at a local dime store. At that time most dime stores had candy in bulk and you ordered a certain amount by weight. At this particular dime store there were two clerks who regularly handled the sales of bulk candy. The manager noticed that one clerk regularly outsold the other. In fact, kids would wait until she got near the candy and would then quickly go up to the counter to place their order with her.

Upon closer observation the manager noticed the key difference that was already obvious to the savvy young customers. One clerk would place a generous scoop of candy on the scale and then remove enough to get to the desired weight. The second clerk would start with a smaller amount of candy and would add candy until she got to the desired weight. Both clerks gave out exactly the correct weight as ordered by the customer but you’ve already figured out which one had the higher sales.

Now if we want to increase sales should we focus on the facts or on the cusomer’s perception of those facts? Your choice.