Yesterday, I was at a print shop to order a ring binder for a bunch of drawings from when my daughter was one year old. These drawings were chaotic. Big pages, small pages, thick paper, thin paper, corrugated paper, smooth paper, … in short: chaos.

What surprised me was the reaction of the employees. 

When I entered the shop, I got greeted on a personal level. And I really liked that.

In Germany, there’s this weird separation of you. To keep the explanation very simple, one is for people you know personally, one is for people you interact with on a distant level. I like to be personal all the time. It’s my mentality.

But back to the story. So after I was greeted so nicely, I was asked what I needed. I explained my needs and shortly after, an employee came to me and discussed the tiny project in short detail. But this guy took his time with me. Telling me how difficult it might be. He even consulted another employee - I had the feeling this was the boss, but I’m not sure - to deliver the best options for me.

After around 15 minutes, everything was prepared and I was told to come back after 30 minutes. So I left the shop.

Only 25 minutes later, I got a message that my order is ready for collection. I got it, it was better than imagined, and the guy who did this even came to me and asked me if everything looked fine. Man, it did. 

This whole experience was so outstanding, I was truly amazed. Especially if you consider I only paid like 6 Euros for it. I felt like I was robbing them.

On my ride home, I thought about this experience. What would be their profit margin for this project? It definitely had to be negative. You can’t run a business with 6 Euros in 20 minutes (if you sum the minutes of all three employees for the greeting, project preparation, production, message, and collection). That’s only 18 Euros per hour. Before taxes. So what’s the catch here?

It’s quite simple. They take their time for every customer. Most ring binders will take them around 1-5 minutes, probably. There’s not much work involved. Also, material costs are virtually zero. And if you have properly printed documents, it’s finished in no time. So instead of 18 Euros per hour, they earn 72-360 Euros per hour. Now, that’s a heck of a change of perspective.

However, by taking their time to serve every customer to their maximum, they clearly earned my respect and I’ll make sure to go to this shop the next time I need something from a print shop. And I will advertise for them - for free. Given these new circumstances, 18 Euros per hour just skyrocketed.

There’s nothing more powerful than serving your customers to the max. It doesn’t matter if you’re running a local business, an online business, or a music business. If you serve your people well, they will gradually become superfans.

What’s one thing you wanna implement into your music business to enhance the customer experience of your fans?