Customers

Customers are the protecting angels of the business and the best facilities to the custo­mers are within the four corners of the policy of the business concerned. No customer should want undue advantage from a businessman simply because he is a customer, but he is entitled to good and polite behaviour and all the attention that may be reasonably given to him. In this sense, a customer who may turn out to be an immediate buyer and a customer who may be only enquiring about a future purchase may be treated with equal courtesy. The enquirer may be a potential customer and if his curiosity is not whetted at this stage, a possible sale in the future may be lost. Many business houses, therefore, operate a counter or section to meet regu­lar or stray enquiries because, if nothing else, it is a good means of having publicity and establishing goodwill.

The seller-customer relationship can be establish­ed only on a mature understanding and the businessman who feels personally involved in any bargaining or negotiations and allows himself to be carried away by his emotions had better take up a different vocation. The higgling-haggling over prices has nothing to do with personal insinuations and it is customary for a businessman to slide back to normalcy after a turbulent round of bargaining. The lawyers of the opposite sides compliment each other about the arguments, the debators and other rural teams greet one another after the contest, and so it goes on in every game. Business is also a game which is played by the seller and the buyer and like all other games, it has to be played in the spirit of a true sportsman.

The businessman, thus, has to keep separate two things, the personal feeling and the negotiation spirit. Especially in relation to his answers, he should not feel hurt if the bargaining-altercations are rather rough for him. Customers, on the other hand, should remember that because they profess to make the purchase they should not have the right to say any­thing and everything. It falls under shopping etiquette that when a buyer has entered a certain shop and has turned topsyturvy almost the whole stock, he should at least buy something, however small, by way of compensation for the time and energy of the shop wasted on him. Also customers should not forget that courtesy invites the greatest natural res­pect and hence no customer while buying a commodity should take it to be the last purchase from the individual or establishment. He is within his rights to bargain and examine but he should do these within the limits of decency.