simplerich

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.

Twenty 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.

I’m in a store and I’m shopping and an employee asks if I need help finding anything. This is normal at every store. It’s part of the training to tell employees to notice customers and greet them that way. Where it gets different is when the training actually has a Day 2 and the employee knows to try and help the customer.

I’m in retail. I’ve been in retail for years. I notice customer service as often as I notice if vents are clean or not. It’s a curse. Rosa over at Talking Story recently brought up a retail incident involving the check-out procedure at a grocery store. I encourage you to go give it a read. It brought up the questions sales associates ask that they don’t really need or want the answer to. Questions they’re trained to ask, but then the training stops… or the trainer assumes the employee will take it from there.

I recently shopped at a Hy-Vee and the employee asked if I wanted help finding something. When I said a papaya she offered to order me some and was more concerned about having them for me on time than about what she would do with the rest of the ones she’d have to order to meet her minimum order. Later, at the same store an employee offered to order me crab fingers and assured me that the rest of the minimum order would be sold to someone, and again was more concerned that I got them on time. Hy-Vee is an employee-owned grocery store in Iowa. As you can see from the customer service they provide it’s a popular one. I’ve never had a bad experience at my Hy-Vee. The employees there are trained not just to ask questions, but to listen to the answer and help the customer get what they want.

Another store that often, but not always does a good job at this is Home Depot where when I ask where something is, often the employee will take me to the item. There are those where you can tell the manager isn’t as customer focused as others because they’ll just point or say “Aisle 23 on the right.” The ones that take me to what I want… those are the ones I go back to.

When at the cash register how often have we been asked “Did you find everything all right today?” What are they going to do if we were to say “Nope. I couldn’t find the peanut butter and jelly flavored freeze-dried astronaut food ice cream packs.” My guess is they’re going to say “Awww. I’m sorry,” and BEEP BEEP BEEP their way through the rest of the stuff on the conveyor belt. They’ve just asked me a question they had no intention of listening to the answer to.

A more frequent example is when people say “How are you?” as part of a greeting but then they don’t stop for us to answer. If there’s no intent to listen to the answer, don’t ask the question. The part of the post where I come to a radical conclusion or offer an insight or training technique to help make the world a better place is going to be woefully missing here. The thing is, the answer is easy. I’ve said it a couple times in the post and title. Employees should be trained not to just offer help, but actually follow through on the help. When an employee asks a leading question but doesn’t follow up on the answer they’re failing the customer and the store.

All customers aren’t the same. This is true on several levels. Gary Vaynerchuk gets it. Here he talks about internet users specifically but there’s so many other types of customers out there. They all look the same when they walk in the door but they’re not the same other than typically being bipedal and mostly symmetrical along their vertical axis.

We were recently resetting a store and some of the product got put in three different places. When I go to Home Depot looking for paint I will also possibly need paint brushes, hole filler, and putty knives. I would fully expect all those things to be near the paint. They typically are. Later looking at the sheet rock I will now need a putty knife to spread out the seam and tape sealer mud stuff (Sorry to have gotten all technical on you with no warning.)  If I’m looking for a way to get gum off my floors and am in the cleaning section with the floor cleaning supplies there’s a good chance it will occur to me that a floor scraper may well look an awful lot like a putty knife. All three of those things are aimed at different people in spite of being the same part number.

I, as a retailer, need to make sure I have my product wherever it is the customer will be looking for it. That sounds simple, but for 14 years we’ve put all the widgets in the widget section, whether they also went well with whizfiddlers or not. The leap there was a big one for us as a company… in spite of being painfully obvious. If The Powers That Be were asked before we were told “If I want a widget I’ll look in widgets! Why would I look in whizfidlers?!?” We weren’t allowed. Same item, different spots was a “Bad Thing.” (Notice the capital letters there.)

This isn’t what he’s talking about and I know it. He’s talking about those people who will get excited about something and share it with others. I think Malcolm Gladwell in The Tipping Point, referred to those people as ‘mavens.’ It’s one thing to like a guy’s video… it’s another to click the “share me” link on the page or copy and embed it into another blog somewhere to get the message out. The transition from consumer of information to sharer of information is what advertisers, and anybody in sales who doesn’t consider themselves an advertiser should probably look into other work, should be after. The people who make that shift… the people that go from listeners to talkers & story tellers, those are the people advertisers and sales people need to identify and court.

Anybody walking in the door intending to leave money in your business is good to have. The people who are going to tell other people to go throw money at you are great to have. That’s all I’m saying… It’s all Gary Vaynerchuk’s saying… and it’s sort of what Steve Woodruff appears to be talking about as well.