A few days ago my wife and I went to a local store to buy some items. We found what we were looking for and went to the counter to pay for our purchases. The clerk took my check for $240.00 and ran it through their approval system. In a moment her machine spit out a ticket that said the check was for too much money. She called a manager who said she seemed to remember something that said they couldn't take a check for more than $200.00. At that point we picked up our check off the counter and walked out of the store tearing up the check as we left. I told the manager that was one of the dumbest policies I had ever heard of and she responded that it wasn't their fault. We went to another store in the same shopping center and purchased the items we wanted, and for less money.
When I came home I sent an e-mail to the company's main office describing our experience. I told them what I told the manager, that was a dumb policy. At a time when retail stores need to find ways to attract customers and make their buying easier and more enjoyable, this company decided to make it difficult for their customers to do business with them. Not surprisingly, nearly a week later the company has not responded to my complaint.
Like many retail stores, this company spends a lot of money on advertising, and many of their products have been marked down to sell. Why bother? Why spend the money to get people into the store when store policies make it difficult for them to give the company their money?
Maybe I'm just more sensitive to this problem because when I had a business many of our policies weren't particularly consumer-friendly. In fact, I included an entire chapter about that mistake in my book Mistakes: Avoiding the Wrong Decisions that Will Close Your Small Business. Our hours were for the convenience of our employees, not our customers. For many years we continued the practice of previous owners in not offering credit card options for payment. We did not offer a wide enough selection of products from which our customers could choose. The book covers these issues and others.
I learned from those mistakes, but many small businesses still have not. The store that had a limit on the size of check is one of a small chain that is unlikely to get much bigger if they do not change their policies and become more consumer-friendly. And to be so arrogant as to not even respond back to a complaint from a customer is an even greater mistake than the check limit.
How long has it been since you've reviewed your customer service policies? Do they make it easier for your customers to do business with your company or harder? Are they easily understood by both employee and customers alike? How do you view customer complaints? Are they recognized as being the potential benefit to your company that they are, or are they a nuisance that wastes valuable time? Does your company have a policy that requires that every complaint be answered within 24 hours?
This extended recession has helped close the doors of many small businesses. In my opinion, if and when this recession ever ends, small businesses will continue to struggle to be profitable. The ones who succeed will be the ones that have made it easy for people to do business with them. Those that struggle, and perhaps eventually close, will point their fingers at any number of problems, but most of those fingers won't be pointing at their own store policies that doomed their businesses. These will be the stores that just never understood the importance of customer service. They just never got it.
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