You must make endless notes too. You’re trying to help create the picture in your mind of exactly what the customer is thinking. And again make sure you don’t forget that these thoughts are not rational. We all bounce around the day with our mind filled with irrational thoughts. It’s the sheer irrationality of these thoughts and your ability to tap into them that can allow you to really get inside their heads and then really tailor everything you do towards them.
What you’ll also grasp quite quickly is that customers generally don’t want to interact with businesses they want to interact with people. They’re not thinking about your business they’re thinking about the people in it at that time and what they’re doing or not doing for them. When they’re in your shop your brand, or fancy adverts don’t matter a jot to them. All that matters are the people who are actually serving them and creating the experience for them.
This process is very difficult for many operators to fully grasp. We are, as a nation, wary of emotions and the irrationality that exists within us, so exercises like this can tend to be quite difficult. Our ‘stiff upper lip’ tends to preclude us from being able to dig deep into our own emotions let alone those of our customers. To help with this it’s useful (with staff or partners) to extrapolate and imagine what might have happened to key individuals that you may be observing before they arrive.
The pre-work cup of coffee is always a good place to start. Most people are a little late, a little grumpy and really not quite awake as they arrive into your shop in the morning. By the very definition of your shop, i.e. a ‘coffee’ shop, we have to assume that they quite badly need a caffeine hit. We can also start to imagine what their journey into work was like. All forms of transport are pretty
horrendous these days so not only are they likely to be suffering from caffeine withdrawals but they’re also extremely likely to be harassed after their journey.
How many of us sit up a little late the previous night watching a movie when we know we should be in bed?
How many of us perhaps have an extra glass of wine which may just take the edge off the morning?
How many of us are 100% prepared for the early morning progress meetings?
How many of us may leave the house after a row with a spouse or teenage child?
How many people live alone (increasing numbers all the time) and have yet to hear a friendly voice that morning?
Some of these factors are highly likely to affect our theoretical early morning customers and a few hours spent observing them over a few days will help you see this etched on people’s faces – not the face that they have when they order the drink, but the face they have when they think that nobody is watching them. With these sorts of questions in mind we can then start to sit down and imagine what a conversation might be that goes on in the mind of a typical customer at this time. Again this is tricky for many of us and we come up with generic responses like:
‘He’s late for work and in a rush. He wants to get a cup of coffee quickly and
something nice to eat so that he can get into work quickly.’
But the problem is that isn’t enough. That’s just a cliché. It’s kind of what we all might say. It’s safe. But to get to the full extent of this and get the true value out of it you must go deeper. When you go deep (just like when you go really deep into any part of your business) the real magic happens.
So what we really want is this – because this (and thoughts like this) are real life! ‘I’m late and I really don’t feel great. I wish I hadn’t had that second glass of wine
last night. I really regret not doing that extra work on my report before this meeting and I’m going to end up being made a fool out of by my boss again! The bus driver is an ignorant sod and I hope that girl from the shop up the road is in – I think I got my timings right.’
Obviously that is a slight exaggeration and that kind of model won’t apply to every business but getting that deep into the mind of a customer allows you to see all those strange irrational ideas that constantly float around inside our heads rather than the ‘together’ image we portray to the outside world.
What you also get to see is a much better idea of what this customer might want to see when he arrives into your store at 8.25 a.m. trying to grab a quick coffee.
It shows how incredibly important remembering his name is. It shows just how important it is that you don’t allow any ‘Oh, I’m not a morning person’ moaners to work behind your counter.