The Importance of Customer Service
Customer service is an increasingly important aspect of doing business in today’s market. After all, when products differ only slightly, a major selling point will be how you, as the customer, are treated. So, one would think that the best way to maximize profit is to treat your customers the best. Easy right? Only in the abstract, since real life is never that simple.
What do I mean, you say. Why would you want to treat your customers like crap, you ask. Well, to illustrate my point lets look at one very successful company called Wal-Mart. For those of you who have never shopped at a Wal-Mart allow me to fill you in on the experience. Imagine a huge warehouse and parking lot covering hundreds of acres of land. It is called Wal-Mart. Inside you will find just about anything you could possibly want to buy. This includes (but is not limited to) food, clothes, shoes, toys, books, drugs, glasses, electronics, car care products, lawn care products, home care products, beauty products, jewelry, pet supplies and everything in between. Many Wal-Marts have stores inside them. Such stores include McDonalds, a hair saloon, a photo place, optometrist, florist and ice cream shop. In case you haven’t gotten the picture by now I am trying to say that Wal-Marts are huge, both in size and scope of merchandise.
In fact, Wal-Mart really has only two things going for it, price and selection. However these are two very big selling points. Having the lowest price in town is certainly a good way to entice customers to come to your store. And with a wide enough selection of products you can convince them to do most of their shopping at your store. Many people can (and will) do +90% of their shopping at a Wal-Mart. After all, since you can get so much there, why go anywhere else? Right? Why make two trips when one will suffice? Many people buy into this philosiphy and they have help make Wal-Mart into an amazingly profitable company.
However, these savings come at a price. And that price is customer service. I have never been to any business where consistantly the service was this pathetic. There are a half dozen stores near where I live, and I get the same service from each. I have been to Wal-Marts in different states, there is no change. As a company, customer service just isn’t on their priority list.
But maybe you don’t believe me. Maybe you aren’t just going to take my word for it. Then please, by all means, go see for yourself. But before you run out and have your dreams of friendly service crushed, let me fill you in on some of my experiences. Here are some issues you can expect to deal with at your local Wal-Mart:
- Long Lines -
In a Super Wal-Mart (which is like a normal Wal-Mart only on steriods, you know, like Barry Bonds) there might be 40 registers. And the only time those 40 registers will be open at the same time will be at Christmas. The rest of the year you can expect anywhere from 4-12 registers to be open regardless of how busy it is. What this means is that if you want to buy something at Wal-Mart then you are going to have to wait in line. It doesn’t matter what time of day it is or how busy it gets, a certain number of cashiers have been budgeted in for that day and thats how many there are going to be. And if customers have to wait in lines 5-9 people deep, then thats what they are going to do. In some stores (like Target) if the current registers get busy then they will call people away from other jobs to man a register until things slow down. This ensures that your wait in line is as short as possible. But they don’t do that at Wal-Mart, for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that they really don’t give a damn. So grab a magazine and get comfortable because they aren’t in any hurry, so I hope you aren’t either.
- Rude staff -
Because Wal-Mart doesn’t exactly pay its workers all that well they tend to develop bad attitudes about their job. After all, if you are making minimum wage at Wal-Mart, chances are good that this isn’t what you plan on doing for the rest of your life. This is just something to do until a better job comes around. Needless to say this mindset doesn’t exactly make for the most pleasant of employees.
- Apathetic customer support -
This is probably the thing that pisses me off the most about Wal-Mart. If you have ever returned anything to a Wal-Mart then you probably know what I am talking about. Every customer service desk I have been to is manned by three people. One of them is hauling away crap people returned, one of them is at the register and the last one is leaning/sitting on something talking to the other two. This means that there is always a line to return stuff. Often times I will stand in line while my wife goes shopping. She will be done at just about the time I finally make it to the counter. And it is like this everywhere. Oh, and did I mention that the people who work this particular counter seem to have a severe lack of “people” skills? It all combines to form a quite unpleasant experience.
- Stupid employees -
This is perhaps the most amusing aspect of buying things at Wal-Mart. Don’t expect the employees to know anything about the products they are selling. And I mean anything. If you are in the electronics department then chances are good that you know more about what they are selling than the person behind the counter. All they know about your purchase is which side the barcode is on. Anything more than that will tax them beyond their capabilities.
In general then, customer service tends to break down into these three categories:
Low prices = Poor service
High prices = Excellent service
Insane prices = Insane service (think buying rare art)
The reason I brought up Wal-Mart was to show how a business at one end of the spectrum operates. Now lets look at Apple, which sits at the other end. Quite a bit of attention has been focused on Apple’s sales lately. Its earnings report came out and the new deal with the music industry was brokered, exciting stuff to be sure. However I was rather amazed at how little press Apple’s retail outlets continually get. They bring in a large portion of Apple’s revenue, they serve as interactive advertisements and they constantly expand into new markets.
Every Apple store is profitable, why? You can buy a Mac online quicker (and cheaper) than you can at an Apple store. You can buy an iPod practically anywhere now (including vending machines) so why have these retail outlets become so phenominally popular? It can’t all be the eye-catching architecture, right?
No, Apple is so successful because is the anti-Wal-Mart. It has small stores, staffed with very responsive (on average), well trained, happy people. And the products it sells are allways of high quality. In addition, Apple offers a wide selection of free services to anyone who walks in door. These services include the extremly helpful “Genius Bar” along with lots of kid-friendly activities for busy parents. The results speak for themselves.
So, lets recap. Apple creates a small store filled with high-quality merchandise and staffs it with smart people who go out of their way to help you. That formula has allowed Apple to keep up its rapid expansion plans (with no end in sight) while maintaining profitability.
So I guess my real question is, why aren’t more companies catching on?
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Comments
I would argue one item on your “Wal-Mart list”. I think the rude staff has more to do with people in general than pay. Wal-Mart actually pays cashiers fairly well. I heard one say she mad $10.00/hour. If all she does is run a register that computes EVERYTHING for her and they now label all the produce (apples and oranges are so confusing, pun intended), the I think $10.00/hour is pretty good. I asked her how long she had been there, and she said “a little over a year”. So, even if she got a 10% raise, then she started out making over $9.00 per hour. I don’t know of many retailers that pay that just for cashiers.
I read an article recently that quoted government statistics (Bureau of Labor, I think) that said that only about 500,000 to 600,000 people made minimum wage in the U.S. and almost all of them were teenagers working part-time.
I think, in general, that people have come to expect huge amounts of money for any job they do. Not every one gets to drive a Lexus. Some are more successful than other.
At 31, I was tired of crappy retail jobs with low pay. So I went back to school, and at age 35, graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering and my first job is paying me almost twice the amount of the highest paying retail job I ever had. And no, it wasn’t easy, but I now make $48k a year plus bonuses right out of school. It can be done…
The article is great. However, I don’t see what the problem with Wal-Mart is.
“For those of you who have never shopped at a Wal-Mart allow me to fill you in on the experience.”
I’ve never shopped at Wal-Mart (for obvious reasons) so it was quite interesting to read about it.
“If you are in the electronics department then chances are good that you know more about what they are selling than the person behind the counter.”
I think it’s normal. I always know all I need to know about electronics I’m buying. Do you really think a salesperson can/should know everything about 50+ digital cameras, 20+ mp3-players etc. AND be on minimum wage ? Gadgets are too sophisticated.
“No, Apple is so successful because is the anti-Wal-Mart.”
So Apple has oh-so-great stores and sells oh-so-great computers but still Macs have only 4% marketshare. The reason is the same “good enough” concept which is a reason why Windows PCs (and, of course, Wal-Mart) are so popular. Most people don’t care about PCs and “shopping experience”, so they buy PCs at Wal-Mart. It’s that simple. No one forces anyone to buy anything at Wal-Mart or anywhere else. If you don’t like a store you can always find another one (or shop online). It’s market economy… ;-]
It is the fashion of the moment to beat up on Wal Mart. I will continue to shop at Wal Mart because they have a very wide choice, low cost and a liberal return policy. They in fact stand behind what they sell. We are now in a global economy and the last to need high prices are the American consumers. Supermarkets started their warfare on Walmart because it does what they did to Mom & Pop stores. Too bad but this is the way it is, deal with it.
Having said that there is a much better example of a company with terrible customer service and it sells to the Mac community. I own 4 external drives made by Smartdisk. So it wasn’t a stretch for me to purchase their Fotochute to store pictures. The first one arrived defective “Init failed.” Returning it to Smartdisk was forbidden. They required that I send it back to the seller. The replacement was a reconditioned Fotochute with no power supply, no manual, no cables required. A week ago I finally received the manual, the power supply and no cables. Original purchase was made February 13 2006 it is now May. My iMac could not connect to the Fotochute. Smartdisk informed me that “It is a known problem that the Fotochute can’t connect to all Mac.: They refused to tell me which Mac can connect to a Fotochute! Fotochute is advertised to work with Mac computers!By the way, you get a one year guaranty on Smartdisk products. Their guaranty is not worth the ink in the guaranty print.
My advise: Buy from Walmart and never again buy anything from Smartdisk if you do not want to be burned like I was.
My wife and I aren’t regular Wal★Mart shoppers, but they sell a popular generic bookcase that she likes and we occasionally drop in to check if it’s in stock. The clerk who helped us last time was very friendly and well informed about product (un)availability. We joked a bit about our weak effort and ongoing failure to get it.
In general, I’m probably more disappointed or disgusted by ways I’ve seen customers treat employees (at stores, restaurants, etc.) than the other way around. No doubt there are certain customers who ought be blaming their own crappy attitudes instead of employees. The ones who expect or demand sympathy for immature impatient behavior that instigates negative confrontative experiences. You know the type.
In the realm of customer service/support I’m definitely not a “customer is always right” sort of person, preferring to give employees more leeway for handling situations depending on the circumstances. Rude, disrespectful customers can be told (politely) to take their problems and business elsewhere if they won’t cooperate with civility.
Of course we all have examples of customer service/support being complete jerks, too.
I just take service/support on a case-by-case basis and minimize overgeneralized preconceptions about any particular company. Wal★Mart isn’t all “evil-doing” just as Apple stores aren’t all “well-doing”.
I totally disagree with James’ article, I don’t know which Wal-Mart you shop at, I’ve been to Wal-Marts in Texas and nothing you said applies to it, I live in mexico and regularly shop at Wal-Mart IN MEXICO and still it offers great service and the same “American Wal-Mart feel” although the employees do tend to be somewhat ignorant and rude sometimes. Anyways, on the apple side, I’ve been to a few apple stores and they do have some of the best customer service I’ve ever seen, probably second only to a fancy restaurant. The prices are a bit higher than their online store, but the service is well worth it.