The greatest Comic Book Store in the West (of Yorkshire)

A few days ago I spoke of an awful customer experience I had with the video-game shop “GAME”. It was an example of a bad choice of how to cater for a niche market; to have low understanding of their needs and to focus solely on Sales.

In the city of Leeds, we have an example of the polar opposite. A store that has a niche market , but looks after them superbly. That store is called “OK Comics”. Today, I’d like to talk through what they do, and why I believe they are a shining example of creating first-class customer experience.

OK Comics is a two-floor sales unit situated in a passageway between two of the main streets in the heart of Leeds. They have won awards for customer service and independent retail. They sell, as the name suggests, Comic Books and graphic novels. Unlike some other similar stores, they do not sell huge amounts of auxiliary paraphernalia. When you go into OK Comics, you really do get the sense that it is all about the comic books.

 And this is where the excellence of their customer service kicks in. Comic Book collection is a very involved and expert thing. Anyone who has watched an episode of “The Big Bang Theory” can imagine the kind of in-depth knowledge and enthusiasm that Comic Book readers have.

Now that could be a potential pit-fall for an Independent Comic Book store. But OK Comics avoids this brilliantly. I personally am not a long time Comic Book reader, but from the first time I shopped there, I was made to feel welcome, and each visit resulted in me buying a product I actually wanted. Any retailer, whoever they are, should be working to achieve this same goal.

My customer journey with OK Comics began about 9 months ago. It was the time when the movie “Scott Pilgrim vs The World” was about to be released. I had been meaning to find the Comic Books somewhere, because I had been told they are fantastic for video-game lovers such as myself. So, I found OK Comics through Google.

 

When I saw the shop, I was scared that my frankly mainstream purchase of the Scott Pilgrim books so close to the release of the movie would earn me the cold shoulder from the hard-core owners or customers of this store. I thought it would be like going into a top-class restaurant  and asking for egg and chips.

This was not the case. The shopkeepers were very helpful, and pointed me out welcomingly to the first 3 books. And I thoroughly enjoyed those books. I returned many times over the following weeks, picking up issues of The Walking Dead, Justice League and Ironman.

Fast-forward a month or so. 

OK Comics hit financial trouble due to some inconveniently placed refurbishment work at the entrance to the passageway that they are located in. What happened? Here’s where their customer service completely paid off. I’m going to quote an article which featured the owners view on what happened. You can find that article here.

“So. What to do? I considered keeping it to myself, muddling through and hoping for the best. But then I thought that perhaps I should let a few of our regulars know, urge them to spend a bit more in the hope of keeping us going until the work is complete. So I put a brief, but frank, message on our website. As an afterthought, I linked to it from our Facebook and Twitter pages.

Then I went home and went to bed.

The following morning the internet seemed to buzz with news articles, links, tweets and retweets, all about saving OK Comics. The phone started to ring, email orders started to arrive. When Jonathan Ross tweeted about it, to his thousands of followers, things really started to pick up. The next couple of days were pretty manic with loads of new people visiting the shop, people I hadn’t seen for years, and tons of regulars.”

That is a great thing. Just think- this small, independant Comic Book store in Leeds generating so much buzz- all because of their customer service.

I follow OK Comics on Twitter (@OKComics). So, when I needed the final 3 books of the Scott Pilgrim series, I went to OK Comics. This was on release week of the movie, when the Comic Books were at the height of their main-stream popularity. I could have got them at any high street retailer. But I made the choice to travel 20 miles to Leeds, and use OK Comics. And it is all down to their customer service.

So do you live near Leeds? If you do, please check this store out. If not you can still follow them on twitter (@OKComics), or catch them at their website.