Customerspective

Rite or Wrong Service?

Rite Aid, one of the nation's leading drugstore chains, was recently charged with selling expired merchandise and overcharging for products by the New Jersey Attorney General's Office and the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs.

Rite Aid says that the errors were caused by stores not adhering to standard policies and practices. Rite Aid seems to be a classic example of a company where the brand promise "With us, it's personal" is viewed as just a marketing slogan, rather than as a statement to be lived by every employee.

It's a reasonable assumption that Rite Aid doesn't have a corporate strategy to intentionally overcharge or sell expired products. However, for consumers, intent doesn't need to be an issue. The fact is that the company doesn't care enough to:

• Either see to it that responsible business practices are adhered to,
• Or (in a more proactive and extensive effort) expend resources to actively engage every employee in living up to its brand promise.

This problem is made worse by the fact that Rite Aid had previously entered into consent orders against precisely these sorts of practices. While Rite Aid was spending money on marketing to bring people into the stores, they weren't spending on the basic training and processes to ensure a reasonable (not even exceptional) in-store experience.

Is Rite Aid going to feel some pain over this? I've got to believe so. If I were a consumer, I wouldn't be shopping there. Would you?

Don't Put Your Customer to Work

When independent shops are being squeezed out by large chains every day, excellent customer service can become a point of distinction. So I was surprised yesterday when I overheard the following conversation while I was standing in the local independent coffee shop waiting for my sandwich.

A staffer picked up the phone and clearly identified the cafe and himself, which was a good start. Then he listened for a moment.

"Oh, well, I'm not familiar with the catering menu. You should call back in half an hour and talk to Bob," he said, while looking at the clock. More silence.

"Bob... Bob," he repeated the name several times and then hung up the phone with a sigh. Clearly, this was not the perfect ending to the conversation.

What are the chances that the customer called back? I know I wouldn't have after such a brush off. They clearly don’t need or want my business. And you should never make more work for the customer. It is the company’s job to create a seamless transaction.

If the shop prioritized customer service (or training), the employee would have taken down the customer’s name, number, the order, and then made sure Bob followed up to confirm the details.

In that scenario, the customer would have been happy to get a confirmation call and have their order completed, the cafe would have had a nice catering job and everyone would have been happy.

Brand Stormtroopers

The World Cup is in the news and so are the "Brand Fascists". FIFA, the international organization overseeing the world cup, is aggressively protecting its sponsor's brands. So aggressive are they that over a thousand members of the Dutch contingent watched one of their latest matches in their underwear because of a non-sponsor beer logo on their lederhosen.

No joke! A Dutch beer, Bavaria, produced these patriotic orange shorts in a marketing push in the run up to the world cup. On June 16th, as Dutch fans lined up for the Ivory Coast match, FIFA ordered ticket holders in the queue to throw their shorts away before entering the stadium.

I really wonder if Anheuser-Busch's Budweiser marketing team (Bud being the official beer sponsor) was closely in the loop on the FIFA decision. If they were, then that's a really bad call on their part. If not, they should be complaining as loudly as the fans to try to set things right.

If you're not providing the event free to the public, sponsorship should only mean prominent name placement, not a ban on competing messages. The repercussions of being perceived to be "brand fascists" must far outweigh any effort to stop brand dilution. The thing to remember is that brand expressions by the attendees wearing/carrying/consuming competing products are usually an indication of personal preference, and not a systematic attack by another brand.

When you start tangling with restricting attendee preference expressions, you're in essence trying to dictate personal behavior - which wasn't the core reason you sponsored the event in the first place. Even if another brand has been smart enough to piggy-back their message on something that an attendee might wear, the downside of negative customer experience isn't worth it.

So, be a "brand fascist", and be remembered sharply negatively as such by the people both directly and indirectly touched by your policies. That's in sharp contrast to the soft, positive message you were trying to achieve by the sponsorship.

A Self-Serving Customer?

Recently, Jack Borland wrote about The new McStarbucks experience?. Fast food restaurants are looking to improve their decor to match that of Starbucks or Panera and improve the customer experience. I agree this would be a step in the right direction for the fast-food world, but what about other changes?

In the article, Ready to be self-served?, John Schmeltzer discusses how gas stations, airlines, and grocery stores all have self-service options. He asks whether customers are ready for self-serve kiosks in the fast-food industry. Would customers prefer to serve themselves? Devin Green, chief executive of ESP Systems LLC, which is deploying a system for alerting a restaurant's staff that a patron needs service, does not agree. He thinks "The country is not quite ready for self-serve. This [the restaurant industry] is a people business. People go to a restaurant to be served." But do we? Particularly at a fast-food restaurant. Would service be better if we directed it or do we prefer someone else to do the serving?

The new McStarbucks experience?

Burger King, Wendy's and McDonald's have all announced that they are reassessing their standard décor. Stores are considering replacing the traditional hard plactic swivel chairs with comfortable seating, and adding real wood, non-fluorescent lighting, wi-fi service, and more subdued color schemes. McDonald’s in particular has taken aim at the Starbucks clientele by adding premium coffee selections to its menu, and the changes to the ambience go hand-in-hand with that focus.

The traditional fast food chains have typically had furnishings and décor designed to move customers in and out quickly. The potential downside for the changes? If people linger longer, then there’ll be less seating available, possible impacting counter sales. With the predominance of the drive through though, counter service now accounts for only 30 to 40% of the typical store’s sales – so I don’t see that as a big problem for most locations.

Also, if you think about it, a lot of the chain locations have already been offering some incentives to get you to sit and stay, like a children’s play area. In fact one of the malls near my home added a similar area when they found themselves with dead space due to an anchor store renovation.

What’s the upside? It’s probably not that people will spend more on a per visit basis, but rather that they’ll be more likely to frequent the locations. Given the competition between the traditional fast-food chains, and the coffee shop and sandwich chains, it’s inevitable that good ideas for improving the customer experience will be studied and copied.

I haven’t seen any of these new renovations, but I’m hopeful they’ll start showing up in the Chicago suburbs market where I live and work. As someone who spends one to two hours every day in places like Starbucks, I’m always on the lookout for another pleasant place to spend time (and money).

Customer Experience - Who Gets It?

I was at a cocktail party last week and met a number of people, from an outsource HR firm rep, to an IT consultant, to a custom wood furniture craftsman. The food was excellent, the venue (an art gallery) was stimulating, and overall I had a good time.

As usual in these events, everyone asked each other what their companies did. Again, as usual, when I explained that I helped organizations to improve their customer experience, I got a lot of blank stares. Interestingly, in almost every group, immediately after the blank stares, one person piped up with “Oh yeah, we do that!” and he or she proceeded to explain a practical example that dovetailed nicely with Vox’s work.

While a few of the largest companies have adopted customer-centric philosophies, I’m starting to see that a lot of smaller firms are waking up to the fact the “the customer comes first” is not an outmoded cliché. For instance, I met a guy who launched an executive assistant staffing firm. He attributes his company’s success to their focus on providing the best, most pleasant experience possible to their applicants.

When the time came to add headcount due to growth, he decided to hire a concierge for applicants rather than to just add another recruiter. The result? He’s getting more high-quality applicants, and even when they wind up being placed by another firm, they’re more likely to come back to his firm for their next job placement. And by developing a pool of talented, high-quality personnel, his ultimate clients, C level executives, keep coming back to him when they need quality personnel.

Ultimately, your best assets, and the only assets that don’t depreciate over time are people, either your employees or your customers. Focusing on providing a superior experience will win you longer, more profitable relationships with both. People have known this for a long time. The challenge is figuring out how to change organizations to do this consistently. That takes a special kind of mind-set.