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Every customer who steps through the door of your organization, or makes a call to your sales center,
provides you with a chance to provide excellent customer service. Every customer will have certain
needs that have to be met in order to feel that they can walk away from a transaction satisfied. This is
something that the best salespeople and any kind of staff will look to achieve at every opportunity. The
customer’s needs fall into two main categories – basic needs and specific needs. Whenever the
customer comes to the store, they must leave with their basic need satisfied for the transaction not to
be considered a failure. The other needs are more negotiable.
Basic needs are those needs which are absolutely essential to the transaction, the customer’s reason for
coming to the store in the first place. Their basic need may be something quite specific or something
vague which they need your help to concretize. A basic need might be something like “I really need a
GPS system for my car, can you help?”, or equally it could be “I am having problems keeping my car
windshield clean, what would you suggest?” Over and above this there may be additional things that
they need, but the basic requirement is the thing that they state in their approach to you.
Meeting these needs is absolutely essential, and the important thing is that no matter how large or
small those needs are you meet them with the same enthusiasm and manners. You may not get much
commission on the sale of a really basic, inexpensive item, but the customer will remember their
experience more positively if you are prepared to smile at them and treat their needs as though you
consider them every bit as important as any other customer’s. The next time they come back, there is
every chance that their needs will be for something that costs ten times as much. If they were happy
with how you dealt with them before, chances are that they will seek you out again.