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Originally Posted by ninjavanish
Clayton,
Customer Service is whats sets businesses apart from GREAT businesses. However, the customer/business relationship is symbiotic. Especially in the business of Brick and Mortar cigar stores. The old saying that the customer is always right is an often purposefully abused excuse and way for a customer to wring the business for as much as they can.
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I could not agree with this more. As a business owner, I know full well the pitfalls of an over expectant customer. As for the symbiotic relationship, it all depends on how much a B&M appreciates one's business. While one B&M may feel that a 'patron' is valuable because he buys $2000 year, there are other stores that might sneer at this amount considering it paltry.
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Originally Posted by ninjavanish
I have often adopted the term "The patron is always right."
Believe it or not, their is a difference between a patron and a customer. A patron has a genuine interest in the well-being of the store and understands that and supports them with their business and in return the business supports them. I would always go the extra mile to satisfy a true patron.
But a "customer" who always comes in complaining of pricing or what is wrong with the business and how he always gets a raw deal on a perpetual basis... I would have little to no interest in satisfying them for the sheer fact that they have no interest in anything other than themselves... this includes the well-being of the business. Threatening a business-owner with "I'll just go somewhere else with better <insert excuse here>" is a sure-fire way to get yourself uninvited from any level of "above and beyond" that a business owner would have otherwise been willing to provide.
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Threatening a business owner is low class and usually renders no results.
But, if you go out of the way to satisfy a patron and generally don't do much for a 'customer', then it's likely that customer will never become a patron. I started out as a customer and became a patron. Every person who walks through the door is a potential patron of that establishment. This is where the owner or his employees need to plant that seed so that the customer will grow into a regular patron.
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Originally Posted by ninjavanish
The hardest thing to do is to seperate your personal feelings from the scenario. So in short, yes, there are probably other places a guy could go... but if you find a place that you like, or even simply a place that fills a need/want (in this case that need/want is stogies!) you should always remember it's a 2-Way street... because most B&M's have a life's worth of work and investment poured into them... and if you piss of the guy that own's that life's work... he may simply say "good riddance" and focus that otherwise wasted time and energy that was spent trying to satisfy an abusive customer on another good patron who has earned/deserves that high level of service.
So in a way you are correct, it is a balancing act. However, do not confuse the two as being the same.
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No confusion at all. I generalized 'customer' because there are customers that are worth having. While a patron is, in this case, a better term to describe one who visits and buys regularly. But, you would be appalled at the B&M owners who think the 'patron' owes them everything while not caring too much about service, the overall quality of their establishment nor the attitude of their help.