It hasn’t been a good week for me as a consumer, ladies and gentlemen…
It all started with a routine trip to Wal-Mart to pick-up some groceries when I found myself with a considerable amount of time on my hands. Sadly, I have to admit that I often have a considerable amount of time on my hands when I visit our local Wal-Mart – or really just about any Wal-Mart - because these days it seems common practice for Wal-Mart stores to staff exactly one cashier for every fifty gajillion shoppers that walk through their doors on any given day. So am I the only one who’s just a little bit peeved by this?!
There have been days when I’ve stood in line at these stores for upwards of an hour or more, all in the name of Low Prices…Always, of course. And although I’d like to say that it happens just as often at other retailers, the more I think about it it really doesn’t. Whenever I find myself in line at the local Publix or Sweetbay or even Super Target, I might be behind two, three or even four people on a busy day, but literally every single trip to Wal-Mart has me stuck behind at least five or six people, all with cartloads of merchandise, and typically at all hours of the night. And mind you, that’s not even taking into consideration the holiday rushes – those particular trips easily left me stranded at the checkouts for over an hour each. The crazy thing is, I keep going back time after enduring time, but don’t think for a minute that I’m by any means a happy customer…
I generally have a problem with a company that clearly wants every bit of my money that it can get its grubby hands on, but then lacks the follow-thru to actually collect it without being absolutely obnoxious in the process. I don’t understand why a company who has customers lining up to exchange money for their goods wouldn’t take every step that they could to make those financial transactions happen as quickly and painlessly as possible – it just doesn’t make sense to me. I always thought that the cardinal rule of business was to keep your customers happy, especially when it comes down to that primary reason you need them in the first place – to get their money. But instead of spending a little extra money to help improve this level of customer service, it’s simply more profitable for us to just sit back and wait as good consumers – clearly we’re not going anywhere or Wal-Mart wouldn’t be the largest retailer in the world.
Now I understand that everything in business affects your bottom line in one way or another and especially when you’ve got thousands of stores around the world, a few extra cashiers at every single one can certainly add up to some major costs – or savings, no doubt from the perspective of those who’ve decided that adequate staffing isn’t a priority – but I also believe in a little mantra that my parents taught me and that’s simply that anything worth doing is worth doing right. That means selling only quality merchandise, maintaining a clean and presentable storefront, and just as important, exploring every avenue that you have to help support your customers in whatever they need as they interact with your business, whether that be by answering questions about your products, standing behind damaged or defective merchandise, and actually selling it to them when they want to buy it! Simple enough, wouldn’t you think?!
Of course, I shouldn’t single out Wal-Mart in this critique because they’re certainly not the only ones cutting corners with regards to staffing to save a few bucks (although arguably I can’t think of too many more retailers as I’m writing this column). Consider your last call to your cell phone provider’s “customer care line” – how long did it take before you were speaking to a live representative? How about one that was actually specialized in the proper area to help fix your problems or answer your questions?? What’s that – maybe you didn’t even end up speaking to a live person at all, but instead one of those annoying IVR systems that makes you repeat everything eight times before finally slamming down the phone and chucking it out the window???
As a side note, in my not so humble opinion IVRs (or Interactive Voice Response systems) are one of the most horrendous mistakes to ever be introduced into the customer service world. They rarely offer the options that callers actually need, they frustrate callers by making us enter the same options twenty or thirty times because their systems don’t recognize entries on the first try, and as for those companies who’ve even left behind the touch tone systems in favor of completely voice-driven prompts – all I can say is whoever signed off on their installation must’ve never actually had to call in themselves.
As far as I’m concerned, unless you offer your callers an option right off the bat to either use the IVR or speak directly to a representative, you’re simply not taking your customer care very seriously. Don’t believe me – take a poll of your callers and ask them how much they like shouting “Account Balance!” into the phone…
I really don’t think it’s all that tall of an order – I’d just like someone available to actually help me when I need it at your place of business, and although I don’t necessarily expect to be waited on at a moment’s notice, I also don’t want to be left waiting all day, either. It’s a balance that has to be made – keep enough people on hand to support the business, but not so many that they’re just sitting around with nothing to do all day in case there’s an influx of customers. There are still plenty of businesses who are doing it right – just lean towards the side of extra people in your staffing models as opposed to the bare minimum that you’ll need to keep the ship afloat. Besides, in terms of growth and expansion, wouldn’t it make more sense to have provisions readily available to handle increases in business rather than find yourself thrown into a dead panic when the numbers pick up?
I can certainly tell you that from your customers’ perspective, we’d much rather see that extra bit of planning and the dedication to customer service than be left with a less than admirable experience with your business, whether its our first visit or our fiftieth. It might mean a few dollars less in the coffers at the end of the day, but if you’re at all concerned about future business, just remember that according to the rules of customer retention it’s still cheaper in the long run to keep your customers happy than it is to anger and potentially lose them to a competitor.
Big, old Wal-Mart may not be too worried about losing any customers today when they’re the largest retailer in the world, but just remember that forty-five minutes waiting in line gives a customer plenty of time to think about all of the other things that he could be doing if he’d already shopped and checked out at the store down the street. You may find our money to be the most valuable, but please don’t underestimate the value of our time…
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