Context: General heuristics given by my dad on how to run a semi-traditional brick and mortar business when we chatted this evening on how he retained and grew his hawker's business ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawker_(trade) ) customer base over the past 10 years without a physical operating store front and no use of internet...
- Always treat customers like they are your close friends
- make sure to view the relationship using a long term time horizon
- always seek to maximize the customer value you provide
- do not seek short term gains at the expense of compromising on the value you promised
such acts ensures customer loyalty - they stick around even after dad has retired for more than 10 years from operating his Store front
- loyal customers were worry that dad might have stopped his distribution business when he stopped his store front operations. Verbal reassurance of continued distribution operation has helped tremendously with customer retention and on going business.
- The distribution volume this seventh lunar month of the hungry ghost festival as well as overall business volume during festivals has remained healthy if not grown
- satisfied customers refer other customers
- connectors type profiles like operators of temples tend to refer more customers than others
- factory owners tend to refer other operators of factories in close proximity
Reflections
In hindsight, I am starting to appreciate all those discussions, growing up, around the dinner table between mum and dad about customer feedbacks and post dinner phone calls to our suppliers on how to tweak the roasted produce to better fit the taste bud requirements our customers.
The product experiments and adjustments were happening on a daily cadence