It's all about the customer
Guest Blogger: Eric Salpeter, Director Customer Experience, iPerceptions
When I was in graduate school, I used to shop at a pharmacy which had two rules painted on the front wall of the store.
Rule #1 – The customer is always right.
Rule #2 – If the customer is wrong, re-read rule #1.
Last year, I bought a sofa and loveseat from a major furniture store. I ordered the items in July and took possession in November. Unfortunately, over the last few months, one of the sofa cushions began to lose its shape, and a curvature began to form in the seat, causing anyone who sat in it to lean to the right. Naturally, I took the cushion to the store, expecting (yes, expecting) them to fix the cushion.
I walked into the store yesterday, found the salesperson who had sold me the items (and saw her face become ashen as I walked toward her with the cushion under my arm), and explained the situation. She smiled (and was clearly disappointed I wasn’t there to buy anything from her), and told me to go talk to customer service, who would take care of the problem.
I’m very familiar with customer service. In my role as Director of Customer Experience, one of my fundamental responsibilities is to service our clients. First and foremost, this means I manage our client relationships. With that in mind, I expect to be treated as professionally as I treat all our clients.
Unfortunately not everyone adheres to rule #1. I waited a few minutes for customer service to speak to me, and as I began explaining the issue (placing the sofa cushion on the counter), the service person looked at me like I was talking gibberish. Completely unable to help me, she went to someone else (to whom I repeated my story), who then went to what I can only assume to be the store manager.
The man approached me and asked “what is the problem?” Notice he did not ask “How can I help you?”, which is how we answer the phone at iPerceptions (always being customer-centric). Needless to say, he did not start off on the right foot with me; I repeated my situation (a fourth time), and he took my original invoice from me, looked at it, and said “you bought this in July. It’s not October.” At that point, I was getting angry, and said very nicely “I may have ordered it in July but I only took possession of it in November, which means I still have a few weeks left in my original warranty.”
Clearly, the store manager did not want to help me out, and explained that a technician needed to come over to look at the cushion in the context of the other cushions. I can only guess what happens next, as the manager did not explain it to me.
Clearly frustrated and very upset, I left the store and this blog began to take shape. It’s one thing for companies to be focused with increasing revenue and decreasing costs, but it’s something completely different if they lose focus on the people who will get them to where they want to go. Listening to the voice of the customer, whether online or in an offline setting, is vital to the success of any organization. Ignoring rule #1 will only result in increased costs as companies fight off strong competition to maintain their ever-shrinking market share.
Suffice to say, this particular company has lost me as a customer. There are a lot of other stores to choose from and a lot of other stores for me to spend my money. Perhaps if they had listened to the voice of the customer, they would have been able to help me, and service me in the way I wanted (and expected) to be serviced. Sadly it didn’t happen. Perhaps one day they will come to realize the customer is king, and it is the customer that drives the bottom line. One goes hand-in-hand with the other, but if you aren’t listening to the voice of your customers, your bottom line will be the least of your worries.
