Retailing Faux Pas


By Bill Bittner, President, BWH Consulting
We all have them – those encounters with a sales person that are permanently embedded in our memories. As I was hiking the other day, thinking about the approaching ski season, I recalled one that is a classic…
Several years ago, as a friend and I were coming off Killington Mountain in Vermont, we saw a “Big Ski Sale” sign posted on one of the shops on the main access road. My friend, Cathy, was a very good skier, probably in her early forties at the time, who spent most of her weekends at Killington in a Ski House she shared with several other hardcore skiers. She had been looking for new skis, so we stopped to see what was available.
As we entered the shop, a young salesman approached us. Cathy told him the brand, model, and length of ski she wanted. The salesman took us over to the ski rack and we looked around, but the proper ski was not available.
His reaction was to suggest a substitute with words to the effect, “I think you would like this pair.”
Cathy asked why he thought she might like the substitute and his response (no kidding) was, “It is the kind of ski my mother would like.”
Managing to keep her cool, Cathy asked, “What makes you think I would like the kind of ski your mother would?”
His response: “It must be the pink jump suit you’re wearing.”
Needless to say we didn’t buy anything.
Moderator’s Comment: Share your favorite recollection of an encounter of the strange kind with a retail salesperson. What will it take for retailers
to improve customer service levels in their stores?
I just can’t imagine what this guy was thinking when he made those remarks. Maybe he figured that, because Cathy obviously knew what she was looking for,
the sale was already lost when the skis were not in stock. I hope that was the reason, because otherwise he was just plain stupid.
I don’t know what kind of training they give sales people in the ski shops, but it seems the first thing they should do is determine what type of skier
they are addressing. It is more important to understand how customers perceive themselves than what kind of skier they might be actually.
A few quick questions, like “How often do you ski?” and “What kind of trails do you ski?” would go a long way to help a salesperson make the appropriate
recommendation. They also have to know their product. Only then might they convince a skier to make a switch. –
Bill Bittner – Moderator
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I am beginning to wonder if retailers will ever actually get it together in the customer service area. In my neighborhood, there is a certain home improvement store that always has absolutely everything I need when working on the house. The problem? It usually takes me about two hours to find all of the things that I need when I go there because their staff is so unhelpful. I constantly get the “that’s not my department answer” when seeking out help and I actually have had an employee run and hide when we made that all important eye contact and they knew I was headed their way for help.
I usually have about 20 hours a weekend to work on projects around the house and, if I have to spend two hours of that each time at the store, you are eating up 10% of my time.
Many retailers do not consistently measure customer service quality, so they can’t tell if it’s improving or not. The most common “method” is totally anecdotal, based on the few customer letters and phone calls received by the upper management. Or the upper management assumes that stores and zones with higher sales trends compared to last year have better service. The best companies either use shopping services or take customer surveys on a wide, consistent daily basis, all year round. For example, Border’s Books gives surveys to 45,000 shoppers a year, and rewards the responders with 15% off coupons. Burger King gives out a toll-free number with an automated phone survey, and rewards the responders with free food coupons. Mercedes used to survey every new car buyer after the sale, asking about the dealer’s performance. I’ve received customer surveys after I contacted the help desks for Canon and Kodak and HP. There’s an old saying, “If it isn’t measured it can’t be managed.”
Rather than share an anecdote, I’d like to share a dream. In this dream, a world exists where the management of service institutions create a culture where actual customer service is a given.
At the core of today’s service issues are the beliefs management has about what is and is not possible. If you really talk to them, you find that they’ve essentially given up. And it’s all about “them.” The employees just don’t have the communication skills, aren’t raised properly, have an entitlement expectation….etc.
I don’t want to live in that world. I want to live in a world where leaders create visions, take responsibility for culture growth and sustenance, and simply WILL things into being.
Executives at service companies take note: if you want to know what’s wrong with service at your company, start with the person in the mirror. Get passionate about your vision, and then make it happen. Stop making excuses.
My favorite keeps happening . . . at my local health food store/chain. The pleasant-but-clueless checkers always ask, “So, did you find everything okay?”. . .(usually looking away/at the ceiling dreamily). Since the store is often out of stock on items I routinely buy, I’ve commented, “Actually, no” more than once, which I’ve realized elicits “…mmmm sorry” nine times out of ten. But my favorite was “Really? What were you looking for?” When I perked up at this unexpected inquiry and shared, the checker responded “hmmm. . .well, if it wasn’t out there, we probably don’t have it…sorry.” Priceless! Now that I’ve changed my response to, “No but it’s cool,” that really seems to agree with them.
For the last six years of his life, my partner of 13 years was rendered paraplegic as the result of cancer treatments. Other than the fact that he was a bit gaunt and could not walk, he was more normal than you and me. However, he was wheelchair-bound. I cannot begin to tell you how many times, when seeing him in his chair, retail and restaurant service professionals would either: 1) start talking loudly and slowly when addressing him, or 2) bypass him totally and ask me what he would like. I have subsequently noticed other wheelchair-bound customers being ignored by service personnel. Needless to say, today I get involved in, um… memorable ways when I encounter this business faux pas.
There is no reason for bad service to be tolerated or to go unnoticed by management. It is too easy to survey customers and simply practice management by walking around to learn what is going on.
As an organization that receives over 4,000 completed surveys every day, I get to read more than my share of service horror stories. When a customer is truly outraged, it is usually about service. Conversely, the vast majority of people who go through the trouble to leave a positive comment are describing a positive service experience.
People providing great service create customer loyalty. A surly or bad sales person is as big a problem as a power outage or inventory shortage but almost never is treated with the same sense of urgency. Unfortunately, front line managers rarely have the authority or training to recognize and deal with bad service.
When my daughter was about 13, I used frequent flier miles to fly her to Japan so she could visit a friend there. I arranged for her to be met by someone when she got off the plane, and directed to where she could meet her friends. United Airlines told me it’d be $50 for this service, and I said fine. But try as they might, they couldn’t get the ticket to go through. After a full day of trying to figure out why the computer rejected the ticket, it turned out that Air Nippon, the partner airline, couldn’t understand why there should be a $50 fee “for something that is just the polite thing to do.” And they were refusing to accept the $50 charge, which was messing up United’s computers. My United rep repeated this story just as you see it. I still smile when I think about it.