Israel Romero / Thursday, January 19, 2023 / Categories: Blog Personalized guidance, a pleasure within everyone's reach. Personalized Advice Who doesn't like being advised when they go shopping and want to know about the products before buying them? I'm sure the majority answer would be yes, of course. Well, at Made in Spain Gourmet, advice is within everyone's reach — yes, everyone's. Lots of content and someone always there The different communication channels When I began my adventures in Barcelona's delicatessen shops more than 25 years ago, one of the things that fascinated me most was seeing the huge variety of products in the different shop windows: cheeses, cured meats, preserves, sweets, wines… and many packaging designs that were so unfamiliar to me that I couldn't tell what they contained. I admit that out of ignorance (a passing one), it was very difficult for me to ask about some of the products. When you don't know something, it's very hard to have that “love at first sight” effect. Much less so if it's something culinary that will be consumed, so the decision is never easy. We came to that conclusion at Made in Spain Gourmet in our early days. Because our ambition was always international, and the million-dollar question was obvious. How on earth were European consumers going to buy unknown products? Well, we did it. Lots of content and someone always there We were clear about one thing. Something stops being unknown if you provide the right information about it. Education and outreach are an act of responsibility by those who know they can help reduce the obstacles between, in this case, supply and demand, between the producer and the gourmet consumer (whether Spanish or European — both may not know many of the gourmet brands we offer, so we can level the starting point). Well then, this “tremendous and never properly valued” work is one of our greatest weekly responsibilities. We publish three to four articles about the products that are in the online gourmet shop, and about the experience of buying Spanish gourmet products. Our mission is to make those gastronomic gems better known and more accessible, selected with the highest level of personal commitment you can imagine. At the same time, it's a great pleasure to do it — and you wouldn't believe how much we enjoy it! Be part of us: sharing knowledge and information so people can be a little happier in this manipulated and hard-to-govern world. We call it “Premium Networking,” which means we share human values with people who resonate with them. It's that simple. Honesty, Transparency, Professional Excellence, and Sharing are the four main ones. Hoping and wishing that our entire community devours all the content we offer is almost a pipe dream, so from the start we had to broaden our outreach spectrum with other techniques to reduce the possible barrier to buying something that's still unknown. Technology gave us a hand, contrary to the coldness that managing your purchases digitally usually offers. Paradoxically, we saw the opposite effect. Direct communication channels between Made in Spain Gourmet, its experts — real people — and their customers, consumers who could finally dispel their doubts. Directly, without noise, and as I said before, between people with real names. The different communication channels For the more formal and introverted, email is the most used channel to ask us very interesting questions — some of them intricate, I won't deny it — but they tell us a lot about the very broad and rigorous knowledge of the consumers. WhatsApp is for those for whom immediacy and curiosity are elevated to the next level. Direct but concise conversations. They want a quick solution to a specific question, no beating around the bush. Language isn't a barrier there, nor in email, since Google allows us to translate reasonably well (and increasingly better, I admit), enabling curious conversations in Finnish, Bulgarian, Dutch or German with our clients, which makes the relationship feel closer and more human. And for the most daring, there's the phone call. Certainly, those people are much closer to buying — and also to not buying. They have doubts or concerns that, if not resolved credibly, will prevent them from buying. They are the most demanding and want to find on the other end of the line (I'm from '76 — it's a 20th-century phrase, very offline, I know) an expert who can resolve their gastronomic existential doubt. There's also a filter here, because for now we can speak only five languages: Spanish, Catalan, English, French and Russian, but with Italian and Portuguese we get along almost perfectly. Although English solves 95% of the interactions. Hearing someone's voice speeds up the relationship and, best of all, builds trust. We enjoy talking with our customers, advising them even on details they hadn't thought of. Because, I must admit, I was born to communicate with people — and vice versa. Sharing knowledge and moments like that is worth a lifetime. And finally there are the most adventurous, those who really want to see and know, so they can then enjoy. Those who make video calls with us (they're not long, because we don't have a lot of idle time precisely…) are people who want to see us to perceive the trust they want to place in some strangers who are supposedly experts in Spanish gourmet cuisine. I admit these are the ones I enjoy the most. We remove barriers and I ask only one thing: be yourselves. Because they won't see anything else from us: transparency, passion and a lot of professionalism. [caption id="attachment_23847" align="aligncenter" width="800"] Personalized Advice, a pleasure within everyone's reach[/caption] At Made in Spain Gourmet we live in an online world, but adding more offline moments each day — even if they're virtual or by phone — reminds us that there is no business or trust without a personalized relationship, and I can assure you we will continue searching for ways to improve this service. Our intent is to reach out to our old Europe which, in many cases, still seems rather distant in some respects, especially culturally. So, if after reading this article you identify with any of those roles, I just hope that next time you visit our website you'll go a bit further and decide to try our personalized advice. We'll be looking forward to it. Difference between paleta (pork shoulder) and jamón (ham) Do you prefer Picual or Arbequina? Print 4 Rate this article: No rating Tags: premiumSpanish brandsMade in SpainMade in Spain GourmetMadeInSpainStore Please login or register to post comments.