It’s not peaking if it’s a plateau.

“You cannot propel yourself forward by patting yourself on the back.”
~ Steve Prefontaine, runner.


Plateaus aren’t like mountains you climb. They’re like steps to somewhere else.
~ Rich Griffith

I’m running and my running training has stalled. I’m an area manager and my area management has stalled as well. I couldn’t get any traction. I kept thinking about how much better our customer service was now than just two years ago when our company’s direction and focus changed with the ownership changed. Seriously. If you came in our stores 3 years ago and came in today… you really wouldn’t recognize the place. And I was really happy with the progress. (hence the first quote.)

Then the store’s owner went on a store tour while I was in San Diego training a manager and supervisor out there for a couple weeks (I’m coming back to this part, it’s important) and his tour notes weren’t bad at all. They were pretty good. The facilities continued to show improvement, the stock and displays showed improvement… and when he was greeted by the employee sitting on a stool behind the counter instead of standing up I put my face in my hands and read the rest between my fingers. When the employee didn’t go to the sales floor to offer assistance but instead barked from the counter “AnythingIcanhelpyoufind?” I was thunder-struck. Obviously I was missing something. I’d gotten complacent. I’d gotten used to things being better and I’d stopped to take a breath. That breather had turned into a loss of forward momentum on the part of me and subsequently my managers and the crews. (More on THIS later too, an entire future blog post, with luck I’ll remember to come back and add a link here.)

While training the manager and supervisor out in San Diego I found myself doing a lot of talking obviously. It’s a lot of training when hiring someone off the street from outside the company to do management positions. It’s not something we typically do, and it was the first time I’d trained at this level someone who’d never worked for us at all. What I noticed was how much I was talking about customer service (I started training on Monday and the owner’s visit I was talking about happened on Wednesday so the customer service song was obviously ready on my lips.) a lot. I would talk about it while discussing all sorts of things. What I didn’t do was talk about any of the things I’ve talked about here or here in relation to any of the training material or handbooks we give new employees. Our training curricula has nothing in it about customer service other than we’re supposed to greet customers when they enter the building. Nothing about offering to help them, nothing about knowing anything about the product, nothing else about customers at all! How were we in retail and none of our material ever mentioned customers? They’re somewhat important to retail aren’t they?

In fact! Are you sitting down? Our store product training consisted of the trainer saying to the new trainee “While I do this (something managery, maybe payroll), you go on the sales floor and look around. If you have any questions just ask.”  Yep. You read it right. Product and store familiarization was a way for the trainer to get some alone time. How could we POSSIBLY render good customer service when we never had any program explaining our products or how we expected our customers to be treated? We’d spent the last two years making managers perfect HR passable mechanical managers. They can all do perfect write-ups that will stand the scrutiny of any unemployment judge… but we’re not teaching them HOW to give good customer service. I’ve considered not confessing this horrible short-coming all day.

Personal aside: I really thought a long time about it. It was so normal it didn’t occur to me until I was training someone completely green that it was stupid. We’d always promoted from within so they always knew the stuff. The sales associates often had lots of time to familiarize themselves with it on their own time and I wouldn’t abandon them that way, but I’d seen others do it for years, YEARS, and never thought anything of it. Now I’m ashamed of it. Seriously. How did I not see how insane that was? It stopped this morning.

Me? I love customer service, and I do it really well. I would coach people to do it when I would see them doing things not great, but I typically work with managers and I wasn’t conveying, obviously, that I wanted THEM to do that with their employees. I was making my managers really good at customer service themselves, and really good at fixing problems to keep customers, but what I wasn’t doing was making sure my managers were spreading the love down the chain. They were working their collective butts off to make sure their employees didn’t do anything wrong so they wouldn’t lose their jobs or have to fire them. That was from on high and me because it was my boss’ priority. But there’s a huge chasm between being “not doing wrong” and doing right. We’d somehow wound up making sure our front liners weren’t doing wrong.

I know it sounds like I’m saying we were astonishingly mediocre (which I hear is a huge sin!) and I’m not. We really aren’t that bad, and we’re MUCH better than we were… but we can improve so much more now that I realize that we weren’t training for great. We were training for “not wrong.”

So, just like in training for a race (I am training for a race by the way) or dieting, or striving for greatness instead of good enough, the training needs to be shaken up a little bit. There need to be more intense days, and days where the focus changes entirely for a while. Runners don’t run hard every day. They take time to work on other things to let those muscles recover. We’re going to do things differently around my neck of the woods for a while. It’ll be intense for a bit, and it’ll mix up the focus for a bit. But one thing that’s going to be consistent. Every employee from janitor to manager to supervisor is going to be involved helping us develop a Customer Service training program that includes product knowledge, store set-up, store knowledge, and anything else that we decide is part of great customer service. I think they’ll be excited to be part of the program to watch themselves grow. It’ll mean a lot more to them if they help me than if I try and top down dump the new way of thinking on them.

Personal Aside 2: It took all I had to not talk about Ho`omau in this post. That’s the chapter I was re-reading a few nights ago when all of this gelled. Last night I was reading through it again as I’d bookmarked it on the kindle and wasn’t reading my marked up copy and I swear it was like reading that chapter again for the first time. If you haven’t read Managing with Aloha: Bringing Hawaii’s Universal Values to the Art of Business yet I recommend it. As your management challenges change over time and different things come into view and other things fade different parts of the book become more pertinent and they resonate differently. The reason I didn’t want to frame this post around Ho`omau honestly is because I’ve just read that chapter of the book twice and I was afraid I’d sound too much like I was quoting it or being too derivative. Suffice it to say that the value of Ho`omau, the spirit of perseverance, and sticking to it, and not giving up… those values are very much what I’m talking about in this post.


Posted on Wednesday, April 21st, 2010
Under: Customer Service, Management, Training | No Comments »

Retail: Points of contact

There are three points of contact that are super-important for the retail customer.

Day Lily1) What does the approach to the store front look like? Awning, lighting, windows, doors, employees/customer hanging at the door smoking, ash trays, garbage on the sidewalk.

2) How does the store look, smell, sound, feel from 10 feet inside the door, the Launchpad? Radio too loud? Can customer get a feel for where they’re going from there? Can they identify an employee from there? Have they been greeted? Is there a stink from air fresheners, cleaning products, how well is the store lit?

3) At the cash-wrap. Is the cash wrap area cluttered? clean? professional looking? Is the employee’s lunch all over it? Is the employee’s receiving/shipment work all over the place? Are there customers lounging at the counter area hanging out with their friend? Will the customer feel OK about taking their wallet out there or not?

Store Front:
If the store front is shady looking a customer may never walk in the door. Got a lot of cans leaning up against the wall? Are there wrappers and cans on the sidewalk? Do you provide an ash tray? Where is it? Is it a smelly nose-sore? Maybe it’s easier to sweep up cigarette butts than walk past an ashtray that’s been rained on and is now giving off a cloud of wet ash smell to any who walk past. Do you have an awning? Do the birds know about it? Are they parking themselves on top of it covering the awning with their erm… leavings? Who wants to walk under that? If it’s lit are all the lights lit? If half the lights work that’s not half right. That’s all wrong. Are the glass windows and doors cleaned and finger-print free? If your store looks dirty from the outside there’s a good chance I won’t go there.  Here in town there’s a tattoo shop that I’d like to visit. They have body jewelry and ear rings and I’d like to get some. Outside their door are three lawn chairs where they and their friends sit and smoke. I’m not walking past that.  As a 40 year old man I’m probably not their target customer, but I’m A customer… or I would be if I didn’t have to walk past extras from West Side Story to get into the place.

The Launchpad:
It’s called the Launchpad because it’s from here that the customer launches into your store or scrubs the mission and leaves. This is the area where they assess how your store looks and feels to them. If the radio’s too loud people will leave.

That’s just sound. How does it smell? I didn’t shop at Bed Bath, & Beyond for YEARS because it was so overpoweringly smelly. Granted, that’s their thing… but I’m a guy (again, not their target audience). An air freshener over the front door may be a great idea two minutes after they walk out but it’s not cool to walk into the cloud of cherry or vanilla scented concentrate right after it’s shot out of the dispenser. Is the front area cluttered? Are there tall walls of grid wall or walls of displays blocking the view of the store? If so it makes it hard for the customer to see where they want to go. It also makes it less appealing because it’s not open. People don’t like to feel closed in or trapped in stores/shops. They like to know there’s room to move around and that they can be seen and see other people approaching. I’m not talking about merchandising or sales or end caps in any of this. I’m talking about the experience, the comfort level of the customers. Is there a visible employee that they can identify in case they need help or want help finding something? In some shops it can be off-putting to walk in and find you’re the only one in the store. I’ve let out a soft, polite, “Hello?” before wondering if I’d stumbled upon a murder scene and didn’t want to round a shelf of spices only to find between the cracked pepper and the vanilla beans the dead body of the  Penzey’s employee. Florists are the worst for this in my experience. It seems I only enter a florist when they are in the cooler, probably hiding the body of the last customer.

Cash-Wrap:
Last chance time. By now the customer is ready to pay and leave. Is there room to put their purchases? Is the counter cluttered and buried in potential add on sales so that it’s a huge confusion of product and cruft? Is this the only work space the employee has? Some times it’s impossible to put your purchases on the counter because there’s a UPS box there where the employee is unpacking and receiving shipment. I get that work happens that isn’t customer related, but just like the view should be unobstructed for the customer, surely the employee can see the customer approach the counter and make room for the one who brings money into the store? A quick smile and apology is all it takes, making me wait as you finish receiving your box of Jelly Bellies and ignore me isn’t endearing me to you as a retailer, and I love my candies! Oh, and shift change? Not my problem. Don’t make it my problem by making me wait 5 minutes while you do it. I get that shift changes happen, but you know what else happens? Customers… we’re paying, don’t say “It’ll be a while. We’re at shift change.” Are there friends or family lounging at the counter hanging out at the counter chatting? If I’m making a purchase I won’t be if you’re visiting at the counter or worse if I have a question I don’t want to feel like I’m interrupting.

There’s a lot going on that doesn’t involve prices, competitors, competition, or how product is displayed.  It’s the appeal of the store and the experience of the store itself. None of this is new. It’s old stuff that everybody knows and hopefully everybody does, but when you find a place that doesn’t you’ll notice right away… and you probably won’t shop there too many times.


Posted on Monday, April 19th, 2010
Under: Customer Service | No Comments »

“May I help you?” isn’t enough.

I shop a lot at amazon.com and I rent movies through netflix.com. Those two sites know me. They know what I look at, what I buy, and what I watch. Subsequently, when I go back they’re able to suggest other things I may like as well.

trix Once upon a time our town had a comic book store and the people who worked their knew their comics. They knew them to the point they could, if I bought MongoDROID Issue 17 they could suggest that I might also like Mongopolypse Issues 12-16: The Chubby Rain* mini-series. This sort of product knowledge that they had was what kept me coming back to their store.

When I used to go to GameStop here in town the staff there was able to help me pick Nintendo DS games based on what I’d bought in the past and subsequently returned. They knew what I’d bought and kept and were able to suggest games that I might not otherwise have considered (anything with an animal in it I would never choose to buy on my own). Their expertise in their area was what kept me coming back as a customer. It wasn’t great prices or anything like that. I wanted to talk to someone about something that interested me and get feedback and suggestions. (the staff now isn’t as good as what they had before so I don’t shop there. I went in yesterday while waiting for a hair appointment and they ignored me while I looked at a game system, not a game, the system… that’s a big sale they didn’t even try for. It’s why they get no more of my gaming dollars.)

I don’t make any purchase over a hundred dollars without first finding out if there are amazon reviews on the product. Seriously. I use the wisdom of the masses to help me buy things. I was looking at car stereos today at a local car stereo shop and got some part numbers. I’ll look them up for reviews before I buy. Not because I don’t trust the guy. He was pretty helpful and the information he had on my old stereo matched up with mine. But we don’t have a relationship yet. I don’t know if he’s motivated by commission or trying to sell out old product or trying to help me, so I’ll consult Amazon.comand Crutchfield for information first. That relationship is something that is important to consumers. Hank Hill references it when he talks about “his car guy” in an episode where it turns out that through his masterful negotiation skills he’s paid “Sticker price” for years. That’s a case where the salesman was a jerk. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the establishing trust, having a specialized knowledge and expertise, and having a desire to help the customer get what they want.

When you’re in retail, and I am… if you’re a smaller specialty shop this is what your employees have to do. They have to know the product in the store. They have to engage the customer and find out what they’re looking for, what they’ve tried, what they liked and didn’t like about previous purchases, and try to figure out what is in stock at that moment that will help the customer right then. If it’s not something that’s in stock at the time the sales person needs to be VERY good to have the customer come back to them. If I tell the customer, “Oh, you mean the widgetmaster 2000? That’s EXACTLY what you’re describing and sadly, we’re out of stock but should have some by next Thursday for the low low price of something reasonable,” the customer is now armed and able to go to Internet.storefront.not.me.com and order it there… and I lose out. It’s not their fault. It’s my fault as a retailer for being out of stock.

This is a clarion call for all those boutique type stores out there, those one-shot type stores that do one thing… if you’re not going to do it well, you’re not going to do it long. That comic book store I was talking about? I thought they did things REALLY well. Knowledgeable staff, big selection, no competition within 100 miles to speak of, and plenty of local events to keep people coming in. They went out of business anyway. So, if you’re NOT doing it not just good, but really good, you’re not going to be doing it for long. Sometimes, even if you are doing it really well the ball bounces the wrong way and places go out of business. There’s no reason to be in retail if you don’t like retail. Honestly. There are so many other jobs out there, why do one you don’t like?

*Two points if you know the reference and give it in the comments.

PS: What’s the picture of the bowl of Trix have to do with anything? Nothing, but isn’t it bright and colorful?


Posted on Thursday, April 15th, 2010
Under: Customer Service, Training | 2 Comments »

Wake up retailers!

OOBI’m in retail. Not a big box type store, a specialty type store along the lines of a GameStop, Candle store, Cell phone store. People who come to my store are coming there for what I sell. People don’t just come into my stores to wander and kill time like at a Wal-Mart or Target.

Today I went looking for a blue tooth earpiece and I knew what I wanted. I’d done my research. I wanted a Plantronics Discovery 975 Bluetooth Headset now that link will take you to Amazon.com where I have free 2nd day delivery and a price that was lower than the store I found it in today. I’m a fan of shopping locally when I can and when they have what I want. There are times when I want something right away and if I do all my shopping online all the local stores will dry up. We can’t ignore our local stores for just the big box stores or the Internet options. This Christmas should have been a HUGE wake-up call to retailers. The Internet isn’t going away. At least half of all Christmas shopping this year was done online among my friends. That’s money leaving town and jobs following the money out of this town.

I went to two cell phone stores today and one was super busy and under-staffed so I couldn’t get help. They had the thing I wanted, but it was locked on a peg and I couldn’t get it off and there was nobody to ring it up for me if I could have. One employee. Yes. I’m sure that helps your labor stay down, but you lost a sale when you were too busy to take my money.

Three doors down at another local wireless store they had the item I wanted and two sales associates working, both sitting on stools talking to each other when I walked in. I shopped for a bit, looked at the phones, no new ones, and still loving my HTC DROID Eris Android Phone, then I wandered and looked at cases for the phone. Evidently the girl on the left was having an ugly breakup with her boyfriend… no, I’m not kidding. So, I stood in front of the accessories and waited, fiddling with them for a minute or so, listening to their story, and then I left. I waved at them as I left the store. They smiled back at me.

Retailers. Wake up. You aren’t necessary any more. I’m not kidding. Nobody NEEDS to shop with you now. EVERYBODY can get what they want from somewhere else. I don’t care how you think your nearest competition is a hundred miles away. You’re wrong. Your nearest competition is as far away as the public library or the nearest internet connection.

If you and your employees don’t want to be in retail keep doing what you’re doing and soon you won’t be in retail. The Internet isn’t going away. If you don’t want to go away you’d better step it up or I’ll wave good bye to you as I leave your store.


Posted on Tuesday, April 13th, 2010
Under: Customer Service | No Comments »

Microsoft loves me… they really do!

All I wanted to do was sync my blackberry calendar and contacts with my computer. The Mac did this automatically with built in programs for both contact management as well as an excellent Calendar program. How they did this without anti-trust problems like Microsoft has I don’t know… maybe anti-trust lawyers can’t afford Macs. I don’t know. But to have as good as I had with the Mac I had to buy Microsoft Outlook otherwise my Blackberry would sync with exactly nothing on my PC. Swell.

I toddled over to the Microsoft store where I could buy a digital download of Microsoft Outlook 2007 and if past history was any indication with every other digital download purchase I’d ever made I’d be downloading, installing, and clicking away in under an hour. That was the plan.

CaptureTwenty hours later I still hadn’t gotten an e-mail from Microsoft with download instructions… my card had been hit but no love in the download department so I complained about it on Twitter. Complaining on social media isn’t new. What is new, and impressed me was someone from Microsoft contacted me through twitter and then through e-mail and finally by phone, seriously… he called me! (Of course they know all my vitals, Microsoft downloads and scans the contents of your hard drive at night, you know this right? JOKE! I sent him my phone number!)

So, because I twittered in exasperation someone from Microsoft, MICROSOFT, got in touch with me and stayed in touch with me to fix the problem and fix it in a way that took me from frustrated to happy customer. They didn’t give me giant piles of free stuff, but they can if they like… they’ve got my contact info! (hint hint) But he fixed the issue, personally took care of the sale and made sure that I got everything I’d asked for and was a happy customer.

This is not a trivial thing that Trevin from the Microsoft Store (online version, not from a mall) did. I’m in retail. I know how hard it is to take an irritated customer referring to your business as pathetic and then be calm, rational, and helpful with the upset customer and turn their bad experience into a good one. Trevin did an outstanding job of it. And I officially apologize for saying his store was bad. I should have contacted them at least one more time before I was so insulting.

The lesson here isn’t that they messed up although I’m sure there are plenty who will say “See, Microsoft screwed up again!” They’re ignoring the important part. From a customer service point of view they didn’t just screw up. They recognized it and then they reached out to me, their customer, and fixed it in a way that was fair. It didn’t give away the store and it didn’t make me feel like they weren’t giving an inch after messing things up so badly.

I wasn’t after a free lunch. I just wanted to shop with them. Today at my work I had one of my employees tell me about an upset customer experience she’d had and how the customer was going to come back. Whenever I hear those I wince. I want them to come back to shop, not to complain. She’d really tried to make the customer happy and things had just conspired against her. I suspect this is one of those customers who won’t be happy until we fire him. (Yes, I’ve fired customers before and it’s not something that’s done lightly but they quit being customers when they quit paying… and he’s getting close to the part where he’s an expense in a bad way.)

So, we’ll try to do as good by the upset customer as Trevin did by me. I’d started the conversation on twitter, effectively yelling “Your company is pathetic!” and he responded with “How can I help fix it?” And then went on from there to fix things. He didn’t react to my emotion or my hostility. He reacted to my problem and worked to address it. In doing so he took me from hostile upset customer to happy customer who will shop there again. His parting words on the phone, were that if I ever had any problem again to get in touch with him. I don’t expect I’ll have troubles, and if I did I would probably do things more right with e-mail through the proper channels, but I feel, as a customer, like I have an “in.” That makes me more likely to shop there again, even if I never use the in… and even though he’ll never remember me and probably handles a dozen cases a week just like mine. (Not because they’re that bad but due to the sheer volume of what the biggest software company in the world must do… at least I think they are, maybe it’s Blizzard.)

So. This week the challenge is to be as good at customer service as Microsoft was to me… and this time when I say that, I mean that in the best possible way. Good job Trevin from Microsoft, and thank you.


Posted on Monday, November 2nd, 2009
Under: Customer Service, Online | No Comments »

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