No Food or Drinks

It is indeed a fascinating paradox that, despite the overwhelming knowledge that nearly every industry has become more competitive, business should respond with countless barriers to their customers.

Antiquated policies and limited thinking binds the growth of these stalled concerns. Both retail and general industry have defined new rules for their business that clearly serve their company, not their customer.

Yet the mom and pop businesses continue to dutifully hang the request “No food or drinks” signs upon their doors. Why? Because that’s what all small retail shops do – a classic case of what I like to call “following the loser.”

These customer-repelling policies are not even grounded in common sense as any minuscule damage that may be caused from a wayward café latte is insignificant in the landscape of customer freedom and a warm welcome.

It is especially difficult to understand these tactics when you calculate the monetary gains that freedom and a warm welcome may become when the satisfied customer returns – and shares his or her positive shopping experience with friends and family.

I have always wondered if any of these small business owners have pondered a marketing book while sipping a cappuccino at Barnes and Noble booksellers. Yes that’s right; the company that sells the most coffee soluble product – books – allows and indeed encourages you to freely enjoy your coffee and scone.

Imagine if you can, if you were told to finish your coffee at the Starbucks counter before venturing out among the books. I believe that we would not have seen the Barnes and Noble or Borders phenomena without their sensible customer ergonomic policies.

I suppose we can forgive the hapless small proprietors with perhaps limited marketing savvy, but how do we overlook the customer-repelling policies born from the corporate boardrooms teaming with MBAs?

When I say customer-repelling policies, I’m talking about policies like hostile security systems that should be transparent to their customers and instead chase them out of the store and make them feel like criminals, and inflexible return polices that require customers to jump though hoops on simple returns. Many corporations seem to hate their customers, and consumers have had enough!

According to a recent survey by customer analytics company TeaLeaf, 42 percent of customers who have a bad customer experience in an eCommerce transaction abandon the sale or make the purchase with a competitor, and 52 percent who experience terrible service from a call center following a problem online will never shop with the company again.

Many companies overtly harvest money from there customers, and if their customers are not happy, well, that’s not a problem. Gail McGovern, a Professor at Harvard Business School, points out that unhappy customers do not necessarily mean less profit.

“When you are a company and your most profitable customers are your least satisfied, you’re doing something wrong,” McGovern said. “Take the cellular industry. The person who picks the worst plan for themselves, who feels the most hosed and taken advantage of, they’re dissatisfied and also the most profitable for the company.”

At the cash register clerks are panhandlers, trying to sell you first a store credit card, then an extended warranty. Just when you think you might finally escape, you are then asked to call or log onto the website and complete a company survey.

I feel bad for the young entrepreneurs who lurk outside grocery stores or other retailers in today’s sales industry, only hoping to sell a few Girl Scout Cookies or school discount cards. Most consumers are so hammered by sales clerks within; they just want to make a clean escape to their vehicles without further harassment.

There is an old saying in sales: “Everyone wants to buy but no one wants to be sold.” Companies need to retire their sledgehammers and create a soft customer sales flow.
We must retool our thinking and undo the damage that e-commerce has done to the company customer relationship. Draconian customer service policies that serve only the company must be replaced with collaborative win-win standards.

We need to get back to putting the customer first. Yes, it seems simple and obvious, but it is everything. Dave Thomas, founder of the Wendy’s restaurant chain stated it well with, “It all comes back to the basics. Serve customers the best-tasting food at a good value in a clean, comfortable restaurant, and they’ll keep coming back.”

It’s no secret that the most successful companies are the ones that operate under the mindset that they are on the verge of losing every customer – and will do anything to keep that customer’s business.

Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton knew this when he said that there is only one boss – the customer. Furthermore, the customer can fire everyone in the company, from the chairman on down, simply by spending his or her money somewhere else.

Old Sam Walton had a point. Granted, there aren’t many certainties in life. But any short list of things we deem absolute would include death, taxes, and the connection between good customer service and good corporate profits.

So why aren’t companies paying attention? Sure, Americans businesses pay lip service to good customer relations, but the statistics don’t bear that sentiment out.

The American Customer Satisfaction Index, a bellwether for consumer spending attitudes, has reached at all time low, especially for the utility, technology and airline industries. Customer service complaints with the air travel industry alone are up 70 percent over the past two years due to confusing fares, crowded and oversold flights, delays, cancellations, missed connections and on-the-job actions by airline employees.

A 2003 study from Business Week Online reported that 77 percent of the more than 400 people who respond to the study characterized their customer-service experiences during the previous 12 months as either fair or poor, compared with a sad 20 percent who said their experience had been good.

The Information Age hasn’t yielded any better service. According to business research firm Jupiter Media Metrix, only 22 percent of sites surveyed in a 2002 study responded to customer email inquiries within six hours of receiving them. That’s down from 32 percent in 2001 and worse than the previous low of 29 percent set in the second quarter of 2000.

Jupiter also found that customers had little intention of returning to sites that respond too slowly to their service inquiries. Also, 79 percent said they would be less likely to buy online from the same company. More significantly, 53 percent said they would be less likely to shop at the merchant’s brick and mortar offline channels – a big red flag to companies with both an offline and online presence.

Yet sub-standard customer service is the norm in most industries, says Ramon A. Avila, a marketing professor and director of Ball State’s Professional Selling Institute. “Expect rude treatment and expect companies to do the bare minimum because their bottom line is more important than a disappointed customer. We are witnessing the death of customer service in this country.”