Serving You

by Danny Summers

At first glance, this title could represent all of our Group Service Providers and our Staff and our role in serving you, our Garden Center Clients. We are certainly here to serve you. But for this conversation I want it to represent the role you have in serving your Garden Center customers. Your Garden Center serves a very important role in your community. In fact, in the past year I have described you (our Garden Center Clients) as servants to your communities. This was never more evident than what you provided in 2020.

In order to really serve your customers in the very best way possible, you must know your customers. This is definitely a challenge... Just how well do you know your customers? Is it simply by studying their purchase history, what sells and who bought it? It is more than just having their mailing address and email addresses? It is certainly more complex than the data you can access from your POS system.

During the recent GROUPtalk LIVE breakout session, Thomas Nettesheim at Constant Contact showed us how we can create smaller "segmented" lists and even tags based on the customers' needs or interests. This made me ask the question... How can we learn more about each customer? The answer is really pretty simple... You must ASK!

We know you met many new customers last year and in studying the current Weekly Department Review (WDR), it appears you are seeing many of them returning. It is very important to document more about them this year. But shouldn't you ask even more about their interests? Creating an in-depth survey will go a long way towards knowing your customers better. The real challenge will be in asking the right questions. This should not end with just one survey of interests. It could be an ongoing effort. Maybe you should consider an initial survey for a more overall picture of the customer and their needs and interests and then develop shorter versions to help inspire and gather information as their interests change or grows.

I hope Serving You can be a conversation starter for you to get to know your customers better! The more you know, the more you can serve!