Some people think that great customer service is becoming a thing of the past and that makes me sad. We are living in a world where a lot of people shop online and the new generation can’t even remember the old mom and pop stores. Those times where everyone knew their customer’s name, asked about their family, knew what they ordered each time, etc. It was like dealing with family.
Now we buy something online and sometimes have a box pop up on our screen to chat with someone from another country about what we just placed into our virtual shopping cart. On my contact form on this website, I offer people the option of me contacting them by phone or email. Years ago it was around 50% wanting to be contacted by phone and 50% by email. For the last 7 years or more 95% of the people filling out my form only want me to contact them via email at first. They are used to not having that one on one connection with someone and being able to talk to them and they want an email instead.
We’ve gotten to the point where people try to self diagnose themselves by doing a Google search about what illness they think they have rather than going to the doctor. We do self checkout at the grocery so we don’t have to talk to anyone. We get food at the drive thru window so we only have to talk to someone face to face for a second or two, not because we are in a hurry.
We go to the library and use the self checkout there so we don’t have to talk to the librarian. More and more businesses are changing to a system where human interaction and customer service is a thing of the past. Those companies that are still open to the public that aren’t focusing on great customer service are going out of business. I’ll talk about that more a little later in this blog.
My daughter goes to a local Biggby coffee shop, a few times a week on her way to work and loves it there. When she walks in she’s greeted with a smile. She loves the fact they seem to know exactly what she orders and care about her. It doesn’t take any extra effort to be nice to someone than it does to be mean or neutral. There are other coffee shops on the way to my daughter’s work that probably sell coffee for less, but she goes there because of the service. She likes an extra shot of Espresso and they know it. It only took her asking for it a couple of times before they started asking her if she wanted one this time.
They know how she likes her coffee and it shows her they care about her. She even bought one of their sturdy travel cups so they could refill it each time instead of using a disposable one. This is that coffee shop’s way of helping the environment. It made them an extra couple of dollars on the cup sale and saves them money on disposable cups. Since they are always so nice to her she always gives them a nice tip in their jar on each visit. My daughter leaves happy and the employees are happy, too.
“People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care”
– Theodore Roosevelt
If my daughter could have coffee delivered by a drone each morning, she’d probably skip it. She loves how the happy people at Biggby make her feel. She leaves the coffee shop feeling energized before her first sip of coffee. When I visited their website today to link it to this blog post, the first thing that it said on their page on a scrolling banner was “We exist to love people”. I think they are showing the world they really do love their customers. Happy customers translate into great profits for most companies.
I personally don’t like coffee. I’ve never liked the taste, but here I am praising a coffee company because how they made my daughter feel. What they are doing is working.
I was listening to the news today as I was taking my two youngest children to school and they were talking about more Sears and Kmart stores closing. The last time I went to Sears I felt like I 
was walking around a ghost town. I was one of the only customers in the store and it was difficult to find an associate to ask a question to. I finally found two employees unpacking boxes and asked them where I could find a certain product they carry. Neither one of the employees even looked up as the one answered my question. They didn’t seem to care that they had a customer or that they could make a sale for their company. They actually looked put off that a customer was in the store.
Did I buy what I was looking for there? No. I went somewhere else that seemed to care about my business. Do your customers feel like you don’t care about them or their business or like they mean the world to you? Would I have felt different if the employees actually took 2 seconds to make eye contact and made me feel like they wanted me to shop there? You bet! I really think I could have dressed up in a dinosaur costume and danced through the store without a sales associate even seeing me. I wasn’t shocked to hear more of their stores are closing.
We are starting to become a society that would rather do our shopping online for convenience, lower prices and possibly because of experience horrible customer service at brick and mortar stores. If the remaining brick and mortar stores don’t start focusing on training their employees in providing great customer service, they’ll be closing their doors, too. People like doing business with people that they know, like and trust. If the customer is greeted by someone not even caring enough to look up and make eye contact when they talk to them, odds are they won’t win over their business.
The same goes for customer service associates on the phone. You can tell by the sound of someone’s voice if they are happy, angry or just don’t care about you. Retail stores like Apple and Costco seem to get the idea of great customer service. I always leave there happy and usually with more purchases than I planned on when I arrived there.
Back 20 years ago we’d tell our friends and family if we had a great or horrible customer service experience. Now people get online and tell the world how good or bad your company is. Bad reviews are shared more than good ones most of the time. “Stay away from (wherever) because my friend’s cousin’s neighbor’s friend’s teacher said the salesman was rude to her.” Reviews can bring people in or make them stay away.
I check product, restaurant, hotel and other reviews online all the time before I do business somewhere. There are times I check them when I’m sitting in the parking lot. Depending on the reviews, I either go in or drive away. Tell your happy customers to leave a great review for you online.
I travel a lot when I get hired as a motivational speaker / corporate entertainer. I deal with people at the rental car desk, hotel desk, restaurants, etc. I get into my room and know instantly if I’m staying at a hotel where the housekeepers go above and beyond or just do the minimum. Some hotels, like a DoubleTree, hand 
me my room key along with a bag with a warm chocolate chip cookie inside to take up to my room.
Other hotels have a nice business lounge with an afternoon snack, nice complimentary breakfast, etc. There are some hotels where I stand at the desk waiting and waiting for someone to finally come up to the desk to check me in and others where I’m greeted instantly with a smile and speedy check in. On rare occasions when I enter my room I notice that the housekeeper folded the towels extra special using towel origami techniques and other times they are just simply folded like you’d do at home.
The towel origami showed me they took an extra minute or two to do something to bring a smile to my face after a stressful day or traveling. Even if a guest showed up that wasn’t stressed, they’d smile even more than they already are. There are times I’ll make a towel origami creation and leave it on the bed before I check out of the hotel. I know the housekeepers will smile when they see it, along with their tip. I got so good at making towel origami and creating my own original creations, I made a tutorial DVD set on it ( http://www.FoldingMagic.com ).
Just because they didn’t go above and beyond for me to make me smile, it doesn’t mean I can’t do my best to leave them smiling and happier that day. The hotel staff knows that traveling can be stressful and tiring. They should make you want to feel at home or as if they went above and beyond to make your stay extra special. It doesn’t take much to leave a great impression on a guest. I’m sure the cookie set the DoubleTree hotel back $1, if that to make, but it sure impresses their guests.
Over the years I’ve been hired by many companies around the world to motivate and entertain their guests. I take pride in my work and offer great customer service. My clients seem surprised with my great follow-up and attention to detail. Some have dealt with speakers or entertainers in the past that were difficult to work with. They are surprised and relieved when they realize I’m super easy to work with. I want their job of event planning to be as easy as possible.
I like to leave my clients with them thinking of me as their friend and not just another speaker they hired. I love my job, love interacting with people and most of all love making people happier than when I first met them. Life can be stressful enough. The news is full of reports of death and sadness. Customer service should be a happy experience for all involved. Offer great customer service and do your best to be a great customer, too. You never get a second chance to make a first impression.
If you need to motivate and entertain your employees and experience some great customer service, give me a call or if you are like 95% of the other people online, use my contact form. 🙂 I look forward to working with you and making you another one of my happy client friends.
SEARS UPDATE: I had to buy a pair of pants and thought I’d give Sears another chance. I don’t know why I did. The lady at the register tried to charge me almost double of the price posted on the rack. I told her that they were on sale. She informed me I needed to give her my telephone number to input in order to get the sale price. Why didn’t she mention this at the start instead of trying to make me pay double? Why not automatically have the sale price come up instead of trying to charge unsuspecting customers double for an item that is on sale? I should have just called it quits, left the pants and walked away at that point.
After getting the pants home, I realized they weren’t very good quality and decided to return them. I was going past the same Sears store a week or so later, was in a hurry, but decided to run in and return them. After waiting in the line that was taking forever and hearing all the customers in front of me having problems, I finally got up to a register. The manager at the register couldn’t get the register to accept the return and asked me to walk with her to the back register.
As I mentioned, I was in a hurry to get someplace else and now had to spend more time trying to return these pants. My Sears stress level was starting to rise. The back register was actually in her office at the back of the store, through the employees only door, past their break room, etc. Between the long wait to get up to the register and now going on a hike through the employees only section in the far back of the store, my short trip was turning into a long one.
In all my years of shopping I’ve never had to go through the back offices of a building in hopes of returning something. She tried it on her official register and it wouldn’t work. She then called corporate customer service and they couldn’t figure it out either. I’m now at least 15 minutes into this “simple” return process. I asked if I could just get cash back instead of putting it on the credit card I used since they couldn’t seem to figure it out. I was informed there was nothing she could do for me and I’d have to come back another day.
After spending all that time and not being able to return what I bought, I now have to spend probably another hour trying to return them again another day. Maybe their computers and registers will work then?
If you make a mistake and have an unhappy customer, do all that you can do to make things right. You usually don’t get a second chance with people. If someone does come back to you after having a bad experience, do everything in your power to make them happy. Don’t treat them like garbage again and ask them to come back again to see if you can get it right the next time. That’s what Sears did to me.
They already had at least 3 strikes against them, gave me horrible service yet again and asked me to take more time out of my day sometime in the future to see if they could do a simple task that should have been done when I was there.
That will be my last time ever shopping at Sears. I’m sorry that I have to set foot in that store again to return the pants. I might just donate them instead of going through the hassle I’m sure they’ll put me through again.
I was a customer for many years and wanted to give them a second, third or even fourth chance, but they blew it each time. A recent news story said that all the Sears stores will be closed by 2019. I doubt if they’ll last past 2018.
You can’t blame their stores closing on Amazon, Kohl’s, Target, Macy’s, etc. They are closing because of the leadership not training their employees in good customer service and hiring people that don’t know how to deal with the public. They are closing because there aren’t enough employees around to help people that know what they are doing. They are closing because of not seeming to care about their customers. Goodbye Sears!