I recently had cause to visit my local Post Office & found myself queuing behind a line of people who I took to be E-bayers as they all had armfuls of small packages to post.
My first instinct was to turn and walk away, I hate queuing, but thought better of it, instead deciding to be patient and wait my turn.
I couldn’t help overhearing the disgruntled comments being made by those ahead of me in the queue, and before long, those behind me too.
Much of that comment was directed towards the three members of the Post Office staff who, so it appeared, were in no hurry to clear the queue. In fact one of them had decided to take her coffee break and stand talking with the other two which further slowed progress down.
Whilst waiting I looked around the shop. It was rather grubby, poorly displayed and frankly had a real “couldn’t care less” attitude about it. My instinct to walk out was growing, but I had moved up the queue a bit and thought that it might be interesting to see how well I would be served when I eventually reached the counter.
When I did get there it was no surprise to find myself in front of a rather sour faced woman who by her dress quite plainly had no interest in her presentation. She neither looked at me nor offered any form of smile and was frankly quite rude, talking with her colleague about her weekend whilst paying me scant attention.
I left the shop as a very unhappy customer, determined never to go there again. I headed down the road to my bank.
In the next queue, in the bank, I watched the counter where there were four positions, of which one was open. Behind the dropped screens of the others I could plainly see members of staff stood around in conversation while the queue shuffled its feet.
When I eventually reached the counter, the young lady teller was polite, smiling and apologetic about my wait in the queue. Next to her serving aperture was a notice, “Have I served you well today?” My business concluded, I thanked her but felt compelled to tell her that her employers were letting her down big time, because however well she was serving her customers, her manager needed to ensure that there was sufficient front line staff to handle the number of customers that came into the bank. In truth his lack of judgement left that young lady open to a constant stream of criticism from disgruntled customers. I wished her well and left.
Driving home it struck me how the two scenarios I had just experienced could easily be played out in the virtual world online.
Think about it. Does your website smile at its visitors? Is it uncluttered and easy to navigate? Does it make people feel welcome? You have but a few seconds to impress an online visitor before they click away. Your “shop” needs to be clean and tidy. It needs to make your customer’s experience an easy and pleasant one.
The same applies to your Social Media presence. This time it is more about your use of words. Do your posts read easily? Are they interesting? Might they cause a smile? Would they inspire others to share them with their online friends? – Or are they just blocks of facts and sales blurb?
By relating our online activity to how it would be seen and reacted to in the physical world gives us a better insight into its impact on those visitors, followers and “friends” we work so hard to attract and meet in the virtual world.
Think about that Post Office & Bank. - Is that how you want the world to think of you?
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