"Stupid Customer Tricks." That's the title given to some true life items in Reader's Digest. Here's one of my favorites from the November 2009 issue: "A customer called our rental store to ask about rectangular tables. I told him we had six-foot and eight-foot tables. His response: 'What's the difference?'"
The story is one of my favorites because it gives me a chance to make a point. Yes, I know it's absolutely cruel to analyze a funny story. Still, I'll do it in my never-ending drive to help you make more money. I'm figuring money trumps funny in this case.
So if you were a salesclerk at that rental store and you were asked by a caller, "What's the difference between your six-foot table and your eight-foot table?," how would you respond? I'm hoping you wouldn't roll with laughter and then say, "You sure are a stupid customer." I'm hoping your reply would be something like, "Well our customers find that the six-foot table seats up to eight people, and the eight-foot table can comfortably seat up to ten people."
The fact is I like that Reader's Digest true story so much I suggest you include it as one of the items in your interviews of job applicants. Organizational psychologists find that some of the best ways of predicting job performance in applicants is to ask them how they'd handle specific situations and then follow that up with asking why they answered as they did. With the six-foot, eight-foot question, you'll be assessing the ability of the prospective employee to figure out what a shopper is really asking, not staying stuck at their words.
Among the best questions to ask of people applying for jobs in retailing are those of the form, "How would you handle this customer interaction situation?"
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