How a food cart loses customers through confusion

Food carts are a big thing in Portland.

They're like miniature restaurants, usually staffed by the owner or their family.

The other weekday my wife was off of work so we decided to walk down to our favorite one for lunch.

We had a nice conversation along the way, even though it was about twenty minutes away.

Unfortunately when we got there, the food cart still wasn't open.

They were supposed to be open based on their hours. Their Facebook page didn't say anything about closing for the day either.

We waited for another 15 minutes to so in case they just stepped away for a bit. Still nothing.

Eventually we ended up eating at another one close-by. Lunch was still good but we were sad that our favorite wasn't open... again.

You see, this isn't the first time this has happened. Even during prime food cart times (lunch), this specific cart is a bit of a wildcard as far as their schedule.

Variability is part of the nature of food carts but if the owner understood their customers behavior a bit better, they could do more business and keep more customers happy.

The same thing goes for your ecommerce store.

When you do things however you feel like and don't take your customer's behavior into account, you'll turn away new customers and annoy past customers.

That's why I'm a proponent of using your customer data to review their behavior, and then adapt your business to how your customers are actually acting.

It's easier and less risky than guessing.

When you want to look at how your repeat customers behave, Repeat Customer Insights can uncover a lot of behavior lurking in your orders.

Looking forward to lunch,

Eric Davis

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Topics: Customer behavior

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