They know when you make a good impression.
The average customer doesn't know beans about furniture delivery logistics. But she knows a good impression from a bum one. That's why it pays to listen carefully when this expert offers her opinion. Better yet, it pays to actively solicit it.
Granted, customers tend to be anxious and subjective about furniture deliveries. For good reasons. Furniture purchases represent substantial dollar outlays. And home decorating always stirs up the emotions.
If we put this understandable anxiety aside and listen carefully, we can learn a lot about how good a job we do delivering the goods. No matter how much any of us knows on the subject, customers see and sense things differently. Again, for good reason. They are more intimately involved with the delivery, than you and I.
Industrial psychologists tell us that people often have different faces, not just on and off the job, but on the job itself. Customers pick up behavioral nuances like bloodhounds pick up scents. Charlie, the friendliest guy around, may well display a negative personality when free from direct supervision. Good luck Mack, a real sweetheart, might be something and someone else on the road in your truck. You might never know, if not for feedback from customers and others.
As policy, an increasing number of stores regularly check back with customers after deliveries to get their expert" views on their men's carefulness, efficiency, and courtesy. Complaint numbers to call are being seen more frequently on furniture delivery, and many other kinds of trucks-partly for customer relations and partly for insurance cost reasons.
Customers really are delivery experts in a sense, because they tend to watch everything going on during the delivery, process-if for no other reason, to be sure the furniture and their walls don't get the worst of it. This watchfulness on their part can work to you advantage when you query them on how well your store delivers the goods.
But don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting that every, negative report result in your raising hell with your delivery crew. But I do suggest that, after listening carefully, you look carefully at the part of your delivery operation being criticized.
Your customers may not know beans about delivery logistics. But they can provide you with information that can help you close sales with more efficient deliveries.