What Halloween Can Teach Us About Customer Service

Happy Halloween everyone! We hope that today brings you many good-hearted thrills and chills and that the little ones in your life have a blast trick-or-treating tonight! Here’s also hoping that you live in an area where the kindness of giving out free candy is not lost on its residents. Not all communities give Halloween their all. And it significantly impacts whether or not people will choose to enjoy trick-or-treating in those areas.

During a recent conversation with one of our colleagues, we learned that the neighbourhood in which he grew up is pretty “dead” (ironically) on Halloween night. So he takes his kids to another community to enjoy trick-or-treating. This reminds us of the perils of offering poor customer service. Simply put, if you offer poor experiences, customers will leave and never come back. Halloween can actually teach us a lot about how to offer top-notch customer service!

Don’t take trick-or-treaters for granted.

Sure, it’s nice to get free candy from strangers. But the true fun of Halloween is dressing up in costumes to visit homes that are just as dressed up. Don’t you love seeing houses decked out in spider webs, skeletons and tombstones on Halloween night? Such homes provide enjoyable and memorable experiences for youngsters. Think of your store in much the same way. Does it offer customer experiences that encourage shoppers to keep coming back?

“Those of us who are truly committed to the fright night, craft a memorable experience that will keep kids coming back every year,” writes Cody Jackson on Business2Community.com, “There might be skeletons in the window, and zombies crawling out of graves in the yard…The people behind that type of experience are rewarded with loyal trick-or-treaters/customers for the next few years. The same thing goes with customers. Those companies that are truly committed to providing a great customer experience provide an experience that is engaging, creates a memory, and rewards you. This results in gaining customers and their loyalty for years to come.”

It’s about building community.

Offering treats on Halloween is more than just making a few kids happy. It’s about getting to know the people in your community. Halloween night provides a great opportunity to meet new people and gain new friends. The customer service experiences in your store provide much the same opportunities. Developing relationships with the people who visit your store is the best way to garner repeat business and long-term loyalty.

It’s important to treat – not trick – your visitors.

As we all know, Halloween is a night when kids are able to get free treats from their neighbours. It’s a time when people expect that fun experiences can be had with the help of those they\’ve never met before. Similarly, your store is often counted upon to provide top-of-the-line products and services as well as great customer service to people you may not even know. It should be a treat to visit your store. That way, more people will want to get to know you!

One way to treat your customers is to offer them opportunities to pay for their purchases using any payment option of their choice. At Canadian POS, we highly recommend the Poynt Smart Terminal for the acceptance of all credit cards and debit cards. For more information, please don’t hesitate to call us at 1-877-748-2884 or email us at info@localhost.