A colleague at work has recently taken it upon himself to be proactive in voicing his dissatisfaction about customer service to the store manager. By most accounts, he appears to be a tough customer to please. He likes answers to his questions right away, he likes problems to be fixed immediately.
Here's an example. He went to a store to get a quote on a custom item. The catalog listed the item, but not the price. After going through a couple of levels of employees who called the manufacturer, they finally realized that only a couple of high-level employees could access the system that had the prices he wanted — and those two employees were at dinner while he was there. My colleague wrote a letter to the store manager expressing his dissatisfaction with this entire process and made it very clear what kind of service he expected. The store manager called him the next day — early in the morning, which didn't improve his mood! — and apologized and assured him that the prices would be available when he was there.
This didn't impress him too much. “That's what they should have done in the first place,” he said.
One of my experiences with another store: I took a 5-disc CD player back to a store. The extended warranty was just about expired but not quite. (Usually an extended warranty isn't a good deal, but I had one of these break on me before.) During the process of trying to get this item fixed or replaced under this warranty, the employees (a) couldn't find the proof of purchase of the warranty in their system, even though I had the slip right in front of me; (b) made me call the customer service number while I was in the store as they were serving other customers; (c) the operator on the other end read off the number that was on my warranty, but (d) this didn't satisfy the people at the store because they still couldn't look it up on their store's system; (e) the store would not take the CD changer into their possession without a valid work order, which they couldn't create because they couldn't verify the warranty information; (f) the store manager wouldn't take it in because of liability concerns. So after making a trip back into town after helping them figure out their system, (g) I had to make another call back to get another warranty identification number so that they could finally start the process. Then, (h) four weeks later, we called them to check the status of the repair, they said “Oh, it wasn't worth it to repair it. You can buy another one.”
So much for taking it to the top at Best Buy.
After my own experiences, and hearing the experiences of other people, I wonder what good it does to go to management with a problem. Sometimes there's closure on an issue, but honestly a demanding customer is not the kind of customer that a business wants to come back. So if the management doesn't bend over backwards for a “trouble” customer, so what? That customer is usually costing the store more than s/he is bringing in. Now, if I were spending $20,000 per year at a store, they might be nicer to me. But if I spend $200 a year, forget it. They don't have the resources to deal with me when they can serve three or four more concilatory customers. Me: “You know, I can take my business elsewhere.” Them: “Here, sir, let me hold the door open for you!”
For most people of modest means (myself included), these stores are where we shop because they're accessible and not unduly expensive. Services are purchased two ways (thanks Gary North): High bid wins, or stand in line. If we're not paying with money (high bid wins), we're paying with time and aggravation (stand in line). Taking things to the top probably mean that we're dealing with “stand in line” store. “To get the good prices, you have to deal with our cumbersome process and bare-bones staff, which serve to maximize our revenue and make things convenient for us.”
And that's the manager speaking.
The real leverage that a dissatisfied customer has, and what concerns stores the most, is that the customer wil tell his experience to others. I've read that one dissatisfied customer typically tells about 20 people of his bad experience. The internet may be magnifying this .
The opposite may also be true. When stores handle problems appropriately, a customer may be inclined to recommend the store to others.
I don't know how the economics of this work out, but it seems likely to me that the most successful retailers will be the one's who provide superior customer service.
If there is an issue that the site manager does not solve, you have to escalate it. Somewhere in the flow chart is someone whose time is worth more than the item in question. They can give the order to fix it. All public companies have the names of the officers and principles listed in the annual reports. Find some names, call, and ask to speak to their assistant (not direct, those calls get screened). Be polite; executive assistants can be your best friend. If they think you have a valid cause, they can present to their boss in such a way that things will get done. They may even contact the site manager directly to find out if they can just take care of it before the issue comes to their bosses’ attention.
Or, you can pay more to shop at a hi-fi store that makes customer service a priority.
I think that overall customer service is at a low across the board right now. Naturally, there are exceptions. But eventually the pendulum will swing back to taking care of people who spend money at one's business.
But until then, small business people (check my link for an excellent example 😉 ) can easily stand out from the Best Buys of this world by putting customer satisfaction at the top of their list of company goals.
I have had terrible, terrible experiences at best buy with items that were under their extended warrenty policy – getting to the point where when they had me call the corporate customer service number they told me that "the person you are speaking to at the store cannot carry out your request because he's not actually the manager, he just told you that he was; when he tells you that the store cannot do __ that's just wrong' and the actual store managed (who this eventually went to) telling me that no, the two different people at corporate that I talked to were just lying, it wasn't his fault. And – this is the best part – that the fact that they had twice sent my item back for repairs and then returned it to me in a nonworking condition because both times they replaced the battery despite the fact that the work order clearly stated that the hard drive was bad, well, that's not against the contract – the contract just says that they'll fix the item when it's broken… not that they'll fix what YOU want them to fix about it.
Anyways… point being: there's no way that this is how this is supposed to work. I don't think it's that there's an optimal solution to customer service systems that says don't-bother-to-please-the-little guy, I think Best Buy just has dysfunctional customer service system (try googling "geek squad" and you'll find both tirades from customers, and laments from former employees who think it used to be a good service until best buy disemboweled it), and that this is gradually pulling the company down, just… with a time lag.