When a customer visits your office, your primary focus will be on ensuring that their experience is pleasant enough to generate a sale. While this focus is undeniably understandable – all businesses want to profit, at the end of the day – how you get to the all-important deal is just as important.
In many cases, businesses focus on their sales pitch to the customer and ensuring that their premises are neat, clean, and professional. Such areas are undeniably important, but there is one aspect that tends to be overlooked: customer comfort.
What does “customer comfort” mean?
Unlike many aspects of business, customer comfort is largely precisely what you would expect: the physical comfort of your customers while they are on your premises.
Why is customer comfort important?
Let’s say you are hosting a meeting with a prospective business-to-business customer. The customer arrives for the meeting feeling prepped and ready to talk business, but over the course of your discussion, they notice that their chair is uncomfortable, or that the room is too hot.
The moment they begin to notice these things – things which are directly impacting their personal, physical comfort – your chances of securing a deal begin to slide. Even with the best sales strategy in the world, if a prospective customer is only half-listening as they’re also focusing on the fact their back hurts, you’ll struggle.
Essentially, you have to focus on customer comfort in order to ensure your customer can concentrate on your business only, without distractions or concerns over their physical well-being.
How can you achieve good customer comfort?
As we’ve mentioned, the two most significant barriers to optimal customer comfort are physical comfort and heat. Here are a few ideas that can help to solve these issues:
- If holding a customer meeting, ensure that adequate furniture is provided; look for chairs with high backs, good lumbar support, and supportive arms. Modern, sleek furniture is all well and good in terms of aesthetics but can be unforgiving to sit on for long periods of time, so let comfort rather than style be your foremost consideration when choosing furniture.
- During the warmer months of the year, it is imperative that you ensure that your premises are as cool as possible. Air conditioning combined with a Window Tint by SolarTex, Inc. is likely to be your best choice in this regard; the window tinting helps to reduce the amount of solar heat that impacts your premises, while the air conditioning ensures the air feels fresh and comfortable.
- During the colder months of the year, you’ll need to focus on ensuring your premises are warm, with a heating system the best choice. It’s also helpful to think about internal light over winter, especially for afternoon meetings; consider investing in LED daylight bulbs to create a bright, friendly internal space even when the sun is beginning to dip below the horizon.
Comfort Is Part Of The Customer Experience
Customer comfort needs to be considered because it’s part of your customer’s experience. And by now, most people are aware of the importance of a good customer experience. Whether they’re talking about a restaurant, hotel, or retail store, customer experience is everything. It can make or break a business and often has nothing to do with the product or service itself.
A great customer experience makes all the difference between a successful business and one that struggles to stay afloat. And it doesn’t have to be difficult to come by.
There are plenty of ways for businesses to improve their customer experience, from small things like faster check-out lines to more significant changes like more consistent hours and better customer support. And don’t forget about the digital customer experience. If you have a website or presence online, your consumer’s digital experience can be just as important as their physical one.
The key is getting started and never giving up. Businesses can build trust with their customers by fixing problems as they arise instead of waiting for everything to fall apart. And that helps create long-term loyalty that keeps them returning.
In conclusion
Getting your sales pitch right is important, but ensuring your customers are physically comfortable is just as essential a component of a successful sale – and the tips mentioned above are the perfect place to start.
© New To HR