The other side of the Customer Service coin

In the previous post I highlighted some of the stumbling blocks retailers face when trying to deliver great customer service, but there are two sides to that coin. There are retailers out there who routinely deliver very good service levels and have been successful at creating a culture in their organizations. There are also those that "go through the motions" using the same mechanics as those that are successful, but without the ingrained culture necessary to change behavior. Let's start at the beginning of the consumer experience, the greeting:

Two examples. Take a look at Subway Sandwiches, those of us who regularly eat there (which I think is everybody) know that they greet everyone who walks in with a "Welcome to Subway". The problem is that they are the length of the store away from you and usually the associate who says it has not made eye contact and has no idea who entered. They could be welcoming an armed robber in a ski mask for all they know. The greeting is nice, but it lacks the ingrained culture to make customers truly feel welcome. However, once your in front of one of their sandwich artists, they routinely do a pretty good job. They listen to your order, rarely ask you to repeat yourself and get you in/out quickly.

In contrast, check out Best Buy one of my favorite retailers (see my tweets on Best Buy @kwdriskel). They have a greeter (admittedly it's also their in-store loss prevention person) who welcomes everyone into the store. They routinely make eye contact, change their greeting slightly for different customers and will offer assistance when asked. You feel welcomed, and the greeting is personalized enough that it rings of sincerity. You will also find that as you navigate from department to department within the store, that the associates responsible for that area ask if you need assistance immediately unless they are assisting someone else. That's a nice touch, but almost annoying if you travel through the whole store as I routinely do, I'll be asked if I need help 20 times. Yikes. Could the associates be a little more observant and notice that I was just asked if I needed help 10 seconds ago? Probably. But they appear to be sincere and in the case of providing quality service in a semi-technical environment, too much is probably better than too little.

You can see, both of these companies got the message that customers like to be greeted when they arrive, one I believe, does it pretty well, while the other lacks the sincerity needed to be truly effective. Consumers aren't stupid they can feel the difference.

Got something to add? Drop me a note.