5 Takes, 5 Stars

Customer service and a vibrant customer experience are the backbone of building relationships with clients. Savvy retailers pull out all the stops when it comes to providing both. Here, five retailers share what they’ve done to ensure the customer does, indeed, come first.

1. “Acknowledgment and recognition comes first.”

Bill Roney has owned The Outdoorsman of Santa Fe in Santa Fe, N.M., for more than 50 years.

“We’re one of a dying breed, in that our business is inside an indoor mall,” he said. “This was the first indoor mall in northern New Mexico, and it’s populated by independently owned businesses rather than by a lot of national chains. So, it’s a very friendly destination. Most of the stores in this mall have the same attitudes we do.”

According to Roney, the most important components of customer service are to be friendly, respectful and honest.

“So many people don’t even acknowledge the customer when he comes in the door,” he observed. “Acknowledgement and recognition comes first. From there — after you establish the relationship by being friendly and polite and saying hello — you can begin asking questions of the potential customer.” 

Understanding what the customer came in for is essential to understanding how you can ultimately serve him or her.

“Those questions help you identify and locate what the customer wants and needs,” Roney affirmed.

Roney looks for people who already have these skills, but he also trains new hires who may not be fully versed in customer service.

“Certainly, we hope to find people who have participated in the retail environment before and are somewhat familiar with and knowledgeable of the products we sell,” he said. “After that, we have our qualifying questions we ask potential hires to determine what kind of personality they have and what experience they have. We want people who are not loud or brash, but respectful. Ours is a Christian store, so this is all very important to us.”

Beyond basic customer service, Roney said he emphasizes two words make a significant difference: “Please” and “Thank you.”

“In our surroundings, we try to have a family-friendly environment,” he explained. “We’re very sensitive as to how we display merchandise, and which merchandise we choose to display.”

2. “Find out what makes them happy.”

At Doug’s Shoot’n Sports in Taylorsville, Utah, Manager Dave Larsen contends the most important thing is to stay customer focused. 

“You’re not going to sell someone a custom gun if they’ve come in for a production gun,” he said. “You also need to pay attention to the timeframe and get them taken care of quickly — if that’s what they’re looking for — or sit and talk if they want to. The most important thing is to find what makes them happy.”

To do this, according to Larsen, his staff makes a point of greeting each customer as he or she comes in the door.

“Then we ask them what they’re looking for, what brings them in the door today,” he shared. “If you don’t know what they’re looking for, you can’t possibly help them. Once you determine what their needs are, then you can work to take care of them.” 

If he doesn’t have what the customer is looking for, Larsen does whatever he needs to do to find it.

Because Doug’s is small, Larsen’s emphasis for enhancing the customer experience is on maintaining a robust inventory.

“I have 4,700 guns here, and about 1.5 million rounds of ammo, plus all the accessories,” he said. “We also have a spectator area with windows behind our shooting range. You can step into the spectator area and have a seat and watch your family shoot inside the range.”

3. “It was the first thing I put in the new store.”

Before she closed her store in late 2022, Battle Born Ammunition & Firearms. Owner Kristy Scott had a kids’ area in her Carson City, Nev., store so parents could bring young children in while they shot on her range.

“It was the first thing I put in the new store,” she confirmed. “Our old store wasn’t big enough for a kids’ area. We would constantly have kids coming in with their dad and mom. I knew I needed an area for them where they could play.”

In fact, Scott said, she first started thinking about a kids’ area because she had several customers who were stay-at-home dads. She watched them struggle with young kids when they came into the store and wanted to find a way to help them.

The kid-friendly atmosphere of the store extended to the restroom.

“I had a changing table there,” Scott shared. “I know it’s not exactly for kids, but it sure did make things easier for parents with babies.”

The family-friendly atmosphere in the store enhanced the customer experience for everyone.

“Once when a particular family came in and I was with my bookkeeper and didn’t stop to hug their 2-year-old, the little girl screamed and hollered and said, ‘I want to STAY!’” she recalled. “Their other daughter, who was 8, told her parents she wanted to go to Battle Born. So, her parents came to the store because she wanted to. She had her own little Smith & Wesson M&P 15-22 and a .22 handgun, and she wanted to become a competition shooter.”

That said, Scott made sure the parents knew they still were responsible for watching their own kids.

“I wasn’t a babysitter,” she added. “I let parents know there was an area where the kids could go to color or play, but I didn’t say I’d watch them.”

4. “Customers are king.”

Nicole Guvenoz is the compliance officer at GAT Guns in East Dundee, Ill., where the store’s philosophy is “Customers are king.”

“In our industry, we can’t go as far as to say the customer is always right,” she noted. “We’re not like Starbucks where we can just say, ‘The next one’s on us.’ But what I tell the staff is it’s free to be kind — and kindness can go a long way.” 

To their staff, good customer service and kindness start at the sale of the gun and extend through the life of the gun.

“We sell a lifetime warranty with all of our firearms,” she said. “We want the customer to come in through the life of their shooting career. We want them to come in, buy their gun, learn about it, shoot it here, buy their ammunition here and bring it in when they’re ready to trade it in. Then we buy it from them, and they buy a new gun from us. All of this, in the big picture, is all about customer service and kindness and how it can translate into a lifelong customer.”

GAT Guns relies on the guns themselves to enhance the customer experience.

“We have the largest inventory of guns anywhere around,” Guvenoz stated. “It’s what brings people to us. Plus, we have been here for decades, so we have longevity and a reputation.”

The store also has a large selection of knives and a massive inventory of ammunition.

“All of it is what brings people to us,” she reaffirmed. “We have more of everything than anyone else, including the local big-box stores.”

5. “Value of listening and follow through.”

At Trinity Ordnance in Fort Worth, Texas, owner Richard Dennis tells his employees the most important things are to listen and to follow through.

“We do in-person training on the value of listening and follow through. When we hire a new employee, we go over situations that might occur and discuss the best way to handle each one,” he explained. “Most of what we do, however, is just on-the-job training as issues come up.”

To further enhance the customer experience, the store provides a comfortable waiting area where customers can sit while they wait for background checks to go through. The classroom area also has comfortable seating for students. The store keeps complimentary bottled water available in both areas at all times.

Five different stores, five different means to accomplish the goal of creating a better experience for customers. In this day and age, when customers can shop from literally anywhere, little touches like these can make the difference between a one-time purchase and a lifelong customer. 

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