by Lynn Thomas
Recently, I was seeking a warm pair of mittens. A simple purchase and many places to choose.
After I dropped my daughter off at school, I knew some stores might not yet be open, but I went looking.
Walgreens only had gloves, so I continued on to four other stores. One store appeared open with cars in the parking lot and people inside the store. I got out of my car and followed a young man towards the store. A woman inside opened the door for him, as I deduced he was an employee. She said to me, “We will open at 9:30, which is in seven minutes,” and then closed the door in my face. Huh?
I stood there a bit shocked. It was very cold outside, and there I stood, eager to be a customer and one of the people who pay her salary. None of these realities were acknowledged. I felt she was totally indifferent to whether or not I would wait. I wished she had been trained to say something like, “I am so sorry. This man is an employee, and I need to let him in so he can help me and the other employees get the store ready for you and other customers. We do not open for seven more minutes, and unfortunately I cannot let you in. I do hope you will wait, even though it is cold outside. I will be more than happy to help you find what you want when we open.” Nope. And the employee she let in did not say anything to me either.
I am surprised at how many opportunities to Wow! and delight customers and create super-glued relationships with them are either not seized upon, or worse, how often employees communicate indifference to a customer, which is the slippery road to losing them for life.
I used to really like this store, and I told many people about it. It was a Wow! store for me. Great selections, friendly help, good prices, good locations, etc. Now I will never go out of my way to shop there and will definitely never recommend the store to anyone. In fact, I have and will continue to warn people about the possible rudeness of their employees. That manager’s 30-second communication just lost that store about $700 annually. If you multiple $700 times the twenty (or more) people I would have recommended to this store, the total is approximately $14,000 annually of lost business. If you add in the negative word-of-mouth advertising that I spread, they could lose another 10 potential customers, which is another $7,000 lost, for a total of $21,000 annually. And all this does not include the number of people these potential customers might turn away.
This store was my first choice for many purchases. Now it will probably be my last. My rough estimate is that this store just lost a minimum of $210,000 over the next 10 years. That was a very expensive 30-second communication, as each second cost this store $7,000.
If training is viewed as unnecessary or too expensive, the decision to not invest in training is a colossally costly and horrifically uninformed decision based on perception rather than hard numbers and reality. You can quantify bad customer service. It is easy. Most companies do not know how to do it, nor do they understand its powerful economic consequences, and, as a result, they do not seek out professionals to assist them.
The attitude that we do not need to upgrade our “Humanware” on a regular basis is what separates the companies that keep growing, even in difficult economic times, from those that struggle to keep afloat, or worse, do not survive.