I always tell our designers to treat our kitchen customers like family. Treating customers like family DOESN’T mean agreeing with them and rubber stamping their ideas. It means having their best interest at heart, doing your best, and actively trying to prevent them from making a mistake.
Were a family member of mine going to make a mistake, I would try very hard to encourage them to make better choices.
When you care about people, you are honest with them without hurting their feelings. Sometimes if truly bad ideas are the in the kitchen plan, giving customers tough love can be the most helpful. The old adage that “the customer is always right” doesn’t apply to family. We care too much about them to just sell them things.
I know that sometimes this approach isn’t what customers are looking for. Main Line Kitchen Design even has a few poor online reviews from people frustrated by our designers being honest with them. That’s OK, because the majority of our customers get better kitchens because of our approach, and their homes and the relationship we build with them are advertisements for our success.
Some of our kitchen customers take pride in the choices they made even though they were originally against them.
One couple I worked with was certain that they wanted an island. Sadly, because I felt terrible about the tight space that was going to be created, I asked the customers to work with another designer, if they decided that the kitchen island was truly a “must have”. After thinking about it and looking at the drawings they reluctantly decided to keep working together and take my advice. When their kitchen was completed, they were incredibly happy and proud of the result. They laughed with friends, family, and even the contractor proclaiming that they were “almost fired by Paul!”
These are the customers that write the 100’s of glowing 5-star reviews Main Line Kitchen Design has received. People that we helped get a different and better kitchen than the one they originally wanted. They know that the kitchen that they love and are living in is the product of us working together. And that they would have a very different kitchen had we simply give them the kitchen they originally asked for.
Looking forward to treating you like family.
Here is a link to ours:
and a story written by my mother about the happiness her 1960’s kitchen brought her:
Bon Appetit!
Paul
