Originally Posted by Retro Grouch
Yeah, I think that you're right. If you start a conversation by asking "Why do bike shops have to suck?" or saying "I hate A-Hole Bike Shops!" the guys who work or have worked in bike shops (myself included)get over-defensive. Can you think of a way that we can work around that?
I guess it comes down to expectations. There's an art to serving customers effectively. Some are pleasant, some are somewhere inbetween and some you'd really rather not have, but they are all customers and survival depends on them. I know when I was in the service industry (for a very long time) I adopted the attitude that if I was going to lose a customer, it would be in spite of my best efforts to satisfy them.