Are you easy to do business with? Lessons from making a donation.

You would think making a donation to a museum would be an easy thing to do but in reality it could be far more challenging than you might expect.

Recently on holiday, I had the opportunity to visit a fantastic museum that was free to visit but asked for donations

As you would expect, there were plenty of collection points for cash across the museum and, I am not sure about you, but I don’t carry cash.

When I finished my museum visit, I went to the reception desk and said I’d loved the museum and I’d like to make a donation. Can you make a donation by card? The lady opposite me? Kind of paused for a second, replying, “Yes, I think we can do that.” Explaining “We’ve had a new system and I’ve not really been trained on it, let me just check”.

She had two or three attempts to take my donation via her card terminal, and nothing happened. She then decided she needed to call for help and asked a colleague to come along. Her colleague arrived, and after a little bit of toing and froing, she decided she might ring the transaction into the till, which was my donation

She confidently looked up when she had run the transaction through and said, “Are you paying cash or card?” We both laughed because clearly, I was trying to pay card and not just pay cash.

I made my charity donation and walked away. Now it’s really interesting that the entire transaction took around 10 or 15 minutes with a number of gaps and pauses and waiting and hanging on and you generally being awkward stood at the till.

I could’ve walked away (not making a donation), but I felt it was important to make a contribution to the charity.

The same lessons apply to you and your organisation.

• How easy are you to work with?
• How easy is any one of your transactions?
• What micro barriers do you consciously and unconsciously drop into any engagement with your client?

Anything from initial meetings to payment to invoice terms and conditions to the way to do business to the way you communicate. Are you fully tuned in to make your clients journey as easy as possible?

It’s very easy not to get this right, and it’s very easy to walk past these things on a daily basis so hopefully if somebody wants to spend some money with you, you are making things is easy for them as possible. Have fun.