Ok, we all frequently complain about the pathetic service we receive just about everywhere. With businesses in decline and under more stress than ever before, the financial challenges they face is a difficult one, we'll give them that, times are tough. Usually the first thing to go though.... is our customer services.
This is nothing new. The growing Buyer-Seller disconnect has been going on for years now and customer relationships have been the casualty that most businesses (behind closed doors) have been arrogantly willing to let suffer for the benefit of the bottom line. The adversarial relationship between the business and the prosumer (not consumer). "So what" you ask? I am glad you asked. True, this is the reality we live in and reluctantly have grown accustomed to it. True, the divide is still expanding: Companies think all the value is in the sale of their product, and we as customers feel the value is in our anticipated expectation of how that product will perform. We don't like it, but since there is no inherent loyalty to us from the business or brand, why should we be loyal to them? Agree?
Here is where I see us now becoming part of the problem. We are letting the them win.
Those on the frontlines, the sales people, have been effected by this for years. I dare say now more than ever before. I'll give you an experience I had the other day that made me scribble it down and it became the seed for this post:
I was going shopping for a HD video camera for sayitsocialTV. I had done my due diligence of shopping/comparing online, reading all the testimonials/reviews and felt ready for the final see it/touch it test. I was on the phone (key part) as I headed into Best Buy, gave the 'what's up' nod as I entered the store to the "Welcome to Best Buy" guy at the front. I went directly to the video section having narrowed my selections to the Flip and the Zi6. While looking them over (I'm still talking on the phone) the sales person for that area came over asks nicely, "Can I help you sir?" and I gave her the 'just looking, I'm on the phone nod' and off she went. (I was on the phone another 20 minutes). Around minute 18, I started looking around the store. That's when this all started to hit me. As I watched customers walking around the store where I was, they ALL were either on their cell phone or texting. Hmmm. So, I stepped over where I could see the entrance, and the same thing. As people were entering the store, they were doing the same thing I did, just giving the 'what's up' nod, basically ignoring the welcome guy - which I do like. Then, I started looking at all the Best Buy employee's. They were at their posts, or huddled quietly together, (I even caught one with a blank stare looking at his terminal) -- I thought, how sad. These people deserve better than this from us. These could be our girlfriends, daughters, husband, or grandchildren, just trying to do their job. But, because of the Buyer-Seller disconnect, whenever we enter these stores, our guard goes up, our trust goes down, we brace ourselves for a potential confrontation, prepare our "just looking" phrase (i.e., "OOH - GO AWAY YOU SALES SLUG") and we emotionally disconnect during the experience as our reptilian brain kicks into high gear. RESULT: A poor service experience is most likely about to happen to us, and it is partially our fault.
Let businesses who don't care enough about their customers to make service a priority cut their own throats. Like Circuit City, these companies will be extinct soon enough. But, let's not stoop to their level, let's take charge of our purchase experiences and make them the best they can be, starting with being conscience of it when we enter a place of business. How would you like it if someone walked into your office on the phone, and walked around your cubicle for 20 minutes, telling you 'just a minute, I'm on the phone' or 'I'm just looking'? (I hear your blood pressure rising and security being dialed as we speak). I try to instill this same mindset with my wife's business, because when someone is looking for a wedding photographers in Wilmington, NC and they find us through a Google search, they expect what they searched for, and a high level of customer service for destination (Ocean Weddings), and that's what she gives them! There is enough stress in life already with out us all contributing more to it. C'mon, let's be the solution and stop adding to the problem!
What say you? Fact..... or fiction?
@TimMoore
sayitsocial.com