I had an informal business meeting at the Three Friends Coffee House the other day. After ordering a blueberry muffin and ice tea, I pulled out my bank card only to notice the familiar note on the cash register: Cash or check only. Having no check book on me or the time to find an ATM, I started canceling the order, apologizing, when the barista said:Â “Don’t worry about it, you’ll pay next time.”
I was speechless. “We know you,” the barista said. “We know you’re good for it.” When I responded it was my first time there, he said, “That’s alright, we trust you. Just give us your name.” He tore a piece of paper off a notebook, scribbled “Peter” and “$3.75″ on it, and taped the IOU on the side of the display case among a dozen or so others.
You can think of the coffee shop’s IOU system as a guerrilla marketing tactic – unexpected, surprising, and unusual, at least the first time around. At any rate, trusting your customers is a fantastic way to build trust of your customers. It generates empathy, a good feeling of good will. With trust being the foundation of relationships, and with relationships being key to community building, it’s a very socially sustainable tactic. And trust brings return business.
I asked the other barista about the coffee shop’s experience with the micro-IOUs. Cheerfully, she told me they have 10 or so notes pasted on the display case at all times. Most people come back and pay what they owe. Some even pay back other people’s debts. Overall, the system works for them.
I’ll say. I will go back to the Three Friends Coffee House, carrying cash of course. In fact, I added the coffee shop to my list of Portland’s third places. I will tell others about it, as I’m telling you now.
Have you experienced a positive surprise at the cash register? What other tactics have you seen small businesses employ to build trust and generate return business? Please share your thoughts in Comments.
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I’ve had that happening to me, and my reaction was very similar: I was positively surprised, and then started going more frequently to that coffee house.
Another good “tactic” is to get to know your customers. Because I now go twice a week to that coffee shop, they know me and I don’t even have to order anything: they know exactly what I want and how I want it. They ask about my week, how the business is going, if I enjoyed that movie they recommended. And it works: I only go to that specific coffee house, even if I need to walk an extra 20min to get there.
I had a surprising story like this recently as well. I was picking up Surf wax (only about a dollar) at a surf shop on Venice Beach. It’s full of tourists coming in and out, however it’s also my current home.
Anyways, I didn’t have any cash as usual and I went to pull out my card when the woman said “don’t worry about it, come back with cash whenever you can”.
She had no way of knowing I wasn’t just passing through, as I had never been in the shop before. I was blown away by the trust, even for just a dollar. Needless to say, a week later I went back and ended up purchasing something for $35 plus the $1 for the wax. Trust and honesty definitely keeps business….