View from the Game Store is a new weekly(-ish) column by Marcus King of Titan Games & Music in Battle Creek and Kalamazoo, Michigan.  This week, King explains the lessons he learned while building out his new store.

Well, we signed our new lease last week, and on Monday we started our build out of the new shop, Titan's Entertainment Cafe.  This new store is going to have 1,200 more square feet of retail space (we are adding more hobby stuff, more Games Workshop games, more Battletech stuff, and other things), as well as a cafe up front, with a coffee-bar, and tables for folks to sit at and enjoy some WiFi and a cup of java.

It's been an eventful week.  On Monday alone I talked to the carpet cleaners, the new tile installer, the plumber, the electrician, the sign guy, a city inspector, two new part time workers, the alarm system guy, the water department fellow, the mail lady, and some other folks... all while removing some carpet, and moving stuff from our storage unit to the new store.  It was a long 14-hour day.  And, I am not all that happy about how I was being treated as a customer.

Oh, the flooring guy and I have done business before, many times.  He gets my business because he shows up at the appointment time, is prepared, and gets me answers when he says he will.  But, for example, the guy who was in charge of the dumpster, he showed up late, was unprepared, and then didn't get the information I asked him to by the time he said he would.  I'm not sure, but I think he thinks he's doing me a favor by even meeting with me about the dumpster we need.

This is not how we treat our customers!  Far from it!  We greet people upon entry, follow up after a couple minutes by asking what we can help them find, always try to learn and remember people's names.  We give every customer a flyer when they buy from us which details our return policy, we staple their receipt to it so they won't lose it--and the flyer details what we buy, and when our events (like Free Comic Book Day) are.  We really go out of our way to hook folks up and take care of them.  When a customer comes in with a question or concern, we go out of our way to help them.  I mean, to a silly level, really.  For example, the guy who bought the Xbox360 game, and couldn't get past a certain bad-guy in Borderlands and came in with questions, we looked up the answer online and got him the "play through" information.  And, he didn't buy that game from us.

So, my first week in building out the new store had a couple lessons.  The first of which is that customer service really is very important.  And the second might be that it's important to have the water turned on before you let anyone use the bathrooms.

The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.