Don’t just satisfy your customers, delight them and they will surely return.
An excellent example of this was my own personal experience dealing with Susan Gilman, a young lady, ex-Geordie coincidently, originally from the north east of England, but living and working in Florida. We had contacted Susan through her Internet advert. My wife Lilian and I arranged a business meeting with her whilst we were out there because we were impressed with her speed and efficiency in responding to our e-mail and telephone inquiries before the trip. On arrival, Susan gave us coffee and during a break in the meeting she mentioned a particular type of doughnut that was a local favourite, suggesting we might want to try them before we went back home.
Throughout the meeting Lilian and I became more and more impressed with the way Susan contacted people who were crucial to the deal, spoke with them, insisted that “Tomorrow isn’t good enough – why can’t you do it now?” but in such a polite and friendly manner. It was such an experience to watch her working especially because absolutely everything Susan said and did was for our benefit and to our advantage – because that was why we had engaged her.
That meeting overran and when we returned the next morning there were 2 coffees and a box of the speciality doughnuts on the table waiting for us.
Of course Susan was going to make her commission out of the deal and said she was only doing her job but we knew she was going way beyond that. A contract was signed within 4 days when it normally takes 4 weeks to complete and would have taken 2 or 3 months back in the UK.
When we left Florida, Lilian and I were DELIGHTED that we had found Susan Gilman.
Originally written as a BUSINESS BULLETIN piece for the Shields Gazette in July 2006.
PS. When we decided to sell the property 8 years later we enjoyed a similar delightful experience with Susan, who helped us to sell it very quickly and very easily, once we had made the decision. Why did we return to Susan? Not only is she a lovely lady, we enjoyed meeting up with her once a year over coffee when we went out there. She quite openly told us that one reason she kept in touch was because she knew we would want to sell the property after about 7 or 8 years and she was spot on. We still send each other Christmas cards.
John Lightfoot MBE, Solar Solve Chairman
