Customer Sucess in Person and Online

When I think back to experiences that prepared me for customer success I have two experiences that come to mind that were impactful.

My first insight into a successful customer experience came from when I worked my first job at Target. Before I started, I thought I would only be bringing back stocked produce to its place on the main shelves, but that was totally wrong. Most of the time, my main job was answering customers’ questions about where certain items are, the return policy, etc. In the beginning, I was slightly annoyed by their inquiries because it was difficult to get my job done and put all the produce out on time. I would normally interact with customers as soon as they entered the store because the produce department was the first area customers walked through. After a while, I learned that even though I thought that the customers were keeping me from doing my job, I realized that the main part of my job was helping customers first because the people that shop there make Target a business in the first place. I learned many valuable communication skills in a short amount of time, including patience and empathy, that I wasn’t as aware of before starting my job.

Another lesson in customer success came from when I built my first website. I decided I was going to sell various trending kitchen products online. I thought it was simple, just market my product and sell it. Well, it actually wasn’t that simple. After a few weeks of getting orders on my website, I checked the email that I set up for my business, and it had accumulated about 30–40 different emails from my customers with questions regarding their package’s tracking number, details on a certain product, shipping internationally, etc. Since there were many unexpected emails, it took a long time to respond to all of them. Halfway through, I created a document in word to be a template for all the common repetitive questions so that I could copy and paste responses more efficiently. I didn’t exactly think about the customer interaction aspect of my online business. I had never written emails from a business owner’s perspective and wasn’t prepared for how to respond to each specific need. Each question or concern a customer had taught me about what is important to customers and what impacts them wanting to buy a product.

Even though these jobs are very different from one another, I learned one big lesson from both: customers are the business.