Got your attention with that title, didn’t I?
Funny story…this actually happened to me.
And I have to admit, it was the BEST Customer Service I think I’ve ever had…illegal drugs and all.
Here’s what happened:
photo credit: Mark Heard
So there I was, traveling around the world with my family, and we were stopped in Fiji. We had been there for over a week, and as beautiful as the country was, I felt like I was in hell. Three hours after our plane landed, my airborne allergies went from irritating to “Help! I can’t breathe and I think I’m going to die!” My normal allergy medicine did NOT work in Fiji at all. In fact, I had found some kind of strange allergy-cocktail that only let me breathe for six hours at a time, and I was popping those little pills like Tic Tacs.
Thus, after only a few days, my family and I were at the pharmacy yet again, although this time, a new one.
That’s when we saw it…a little souvenir shop several stores down from the pharmacy. Its doors faced an elevator, which made it hard to see from the parking lot…not an ideal location for a store relying on tourism.
The salesmen, however, had learned to flag people down and invite them into their shop. On that day, they flagged my husband down as we were heading to the pharmacy. (Of course, I had bulldozed right past them since I was on a mission for “legal drugs.”)
I’m not sure how exactly these salesmen managed to convince my husband that we should pass the other dozen or so stores between the pharmacy and their shop, but somehow they managed. And as soon as I exited the pharmacy with my goodies in hand, my husband redirected me to this nondescript little shop ran by a couple of Fijians.
Peaking in the window, I saw at once that this store was not particularly attractive. It was plain white with glass shelves lining the walls. Knee-high tables made from planks and bricks, then covered by white sheets, ran down the middle of the store to where a makeshift room had been constructed with two walls that didn’t quite reach the ceiling. The door to this room was another sheet, hung on a line or rope that stretched between the two walls. It was not a store I would normally have stopped in front of, except for the massive amounts of souvenirs that filled the room.
With my husband practically shoving me from behind, I entered this rather poor excuse of a store. Being a bit of a shopaholic, I gravitated toward the goodies stacked on the dusty glass shelves.
Even though I purposely avoided eye contact, one of the Sales Reps approached me.
“Excuse me,” he said to me politely, inching closer so that he was standing next to me.
I turned my head and looked at him. He was wearing a faded white t-shirt, a dingy black baseball cap and some jeans. “Yes?” I inquired a bit abruptly, my gaze moving down to his very plain flip flops and dirty looking feet. The man looked as if he was no more than 30 years old, but his feet looked as if he was over 40.
“Hi,” he greeted, ignoring the “Leave Me Alone” signals I was radiating. “My name is…(something Fijian and too difficult to remember). I was wondering if you would mind…we have a custom here in our store…a Fijian custom that we like to do with anyone who visits. Would you mind coming this way?”
A Fijian custom? I thought. We had been in Fiji over a week, gone to dozens of shops, and no one had said anything about Fijian customs to us.
I actually found myself intrigued and followed him without thinking…right past the hanging threadbare sheet into the little makeshift room.
There were straw mats on the floors, just like we had seen at a Fijian village we visited a couple days earlier. There were also a couple of black bowls (perfect for guacamole) and some incense.
Our salesman kicked off his flip flops and encouraged us to do the same. We did because we knew it really was the custom in Fiji to remove one’s shoes before entering a domicile.
“Sit – sit,” the man encouraged, flapping his hands at us.
We – my hubby, our two kids and myself – all plopped down onto the mats and folded our legs Indian Style.
The other salesman in the store joined us. He was just as dingy looking as his friend with a t-shirt, khakis and flip-flops (that he left by the sheeted door).
The two men sat across from us, books and papers in hand, smiling warmly as they launched into an obviously-rehearsed speech…
“We are from the village of (blah blah blah), which just happens to be in this Fijian guidebook.” The first salesman showed us a very thick travel book that fell open to a section of the book that had been shown so many times, the binding was actually broken inside. “See. Here is what this book says about our village.” The man proceeded to read us a short paragraph very proudly about “their village.”
As he did, I couldn’t help looking around and thinking, “What the hell did I just do? Why did I follow this guy into this creepy little room? He could rob and kill us while we’re here.” (The room was that bad.)
Finishing the paragraph, the man handed me the book and said, “And everything in this store was made by a villager in our tribe.” He said it with such pride, I couldn’t help but believe it was true.
“How many people are actually in your village?” I asked, curious to know more even though I was still a bit suspicious of the “custom” we were supposed to go through.
“A little over 800,” he answered proudly. Since it seemed that most villages in Fiji had around 100 people before splitting off into smaller tribes, I surmised that his village must be doing fairly well. “The village is an hour and a half away from here,” he continued.
“An hour and a half? Do you live here in Nadi then?” I asked.
“No. We take the bus home when we’re done. The villagers all take turns running this store, so we only come here a couple days a week. Anyway…” he turned to his friend who then handed my husband and I laminated articles that had obviously seen better days. “I invited you back here to share in a Fijian custom of welcome where we all sit together and share Kava. Have you ever had Kava before?”
“Kava? No. What is that?” I asked.
“It’s a drink brewed from the root of a plant here in Fiji. The article tells you more about it including the health benefits. It’s perfectly safe for children.”
The second salesman went into the nearby bathroom and proceeded to fill a bowl with water.
“Uh…I don’t know,” I stalled, craning my head to see into the bathroom. “We were told not to drink the water here. I think it would be better if we passed on Kava.”
The first salesman gave me a patient smile as the other returned to our mat, a black bowl of water carefully balanced in his leathery hands. “You don’t have to drink it if you don’t want to. We’ll drink it in honor of you and your visit here today. You can just sit and watch the ceremony, if you like.”
“Uh…okay.”
These two men then proceeded to show us the custom. They poured the water from the bowl into a sackcloth bag, which then sieved the water through a powder and drained through the bag. It looked very muddy as it filled the new bowl.
These two men began to pray in Fijian, clapping three times, taking a drink, and then passing the bowl. They repeated these steps three times as we watched them finish the Kava. When they were done, they smiled at us and asked if we had any questions.
Of course we did.
Soon, the two men were telling us all about how the store was set up to help raise money in order to educate the children in their village. The women made the more delicate wooden and coconut jewelry in the shop, while the children made some really adorable paintings on special fibrous paper. Their were also tons of obviously-hand-carved bowls made from wood with tons of little imperfections. Still, the craftsmanship of everything was stunning.
When it was time to look through the goodies again, I looked at it with a new eye. I could almost see a Fijian man’s hands crafting the tulip bowl I ended up buying. And I could imagine the children that painted the little squares of paper with turtles, geckos, frogs, and little flowers. I could even imagine the women sitting around and gossiping as they laced together bits of coconut, beads and shells with leather straps to make the shop’s jewelry.
I ended up spending $140 Fijian Dollars in that store, (about $70 US Dollars) more than I had spent anywhere else. And I felt good about it…even going so far as to tell myself, “I’m helping make a difference in a Fijian tribe by buying this little surfboard magnet.”
Later I realized, it was probably all a scam…especially when I found out that Kava was considered a drug, even though it was made from a tree root AND was incredibly popular with the Fijian locals…still, it was not legally sold anywhere. And the prices I paid, although not the cheapest, were about average for similar souvenirs I saw in other stores.
All in all, I didn’t mind if I had been scammed or swindled. The customer service had been so good, I felt as if those two guys deserved whatever we spent there. They spent 20 minutes with us explaining a Fijian custom, and they made us feel like we were the important ones from the moment we stepped into the store. In addition, they told us a story that made their products more real to us than any product we bought anywhere else in the world. I have NO REGRETS about stopping in the store that day, and I seriously love everything I bought. For that, I am grateful to those two guys…and their illegal narcotics.
Lesson Learned: Customer Service is about building a relationship between a customer and a salesman. The shop can be ugly; the salesmen could be dressed like crap; and the products can be unreasonably priced, but as long they have good salesmen, they’ll make sales. The best salesmen will weave a story for their customers, drawing them in, making them feel comfortable, and showing them why their product is better than anyone else’s. If done successfully, the customer will be thrilled to buy anything the salesman has – despite everything else – and return again and again…
With or without the Kava.
