If you have a great customer experience, are you willing to tell someone else? I would think, yes. I got what I wanted with no issue and the sales rep did a good job. Yeah, if everything went well, I would be very willing to recommend this store (and even the sales rep) to someone else. I would. Now, here is the kicker. If I experienced the antithesis, or the exact opposite (a really, really bad time), I would not only be willing to tell someone else, I would want to immediately tell someone so as to alleviate the tension and inconvenience I experienced. “I was slighted. I am an American and no matter how self-serving and self-focused my expectations may have been, someone had to bow down to me and serve me and they didn’t to the level of my completely unachievable degree…darn it. I want to tell everyone about how my life was made hard!” Really? Yep. I may have loaded the last few statements. I have issues with how people treat others in retail. I am working on that one.
Companies are closely watching a customer’s willingness to recommend. Known by many as WTR, the important acronym in customer service right now. The idea is simple. Retail organizations want to succeed. They know that if they do a good job, that relative goodness will be shared with another, well customer ideally. In some way or at a very important minimum, the original customer will come back. The further aspect of the idea is to see if the customer is in fact willing to recommend the business, the store, the sales rep. If the answer is yes, well then, the company did its job. And perhaps more critical, the store and rep did their job. It is a nice measureable.
Here are the hiccups. One, people are willing, but may very well not actually do it. There may not be an obvious motivation. Intrinsically, probably not, unless they really engage in retail and want others to benefit from knowing that “Todd did a great job at wherever”. And extrinsically, unless you make some incentive really attractive, probably not. I mean getting twenty five percent off of an accessory means I have to want something else so much I will get in my car and drive to spend some more money on another day. Second hiccup, if you suck, wow, I want to tell every soul about it for the rest of my life. And in time it will be like the fish story where the fish gets bigger with each year. I mean, in ten years’ time that experience with Bob’s retail store can literally turn into an incomprehensible moment in your life when someone punched in the face, called you names and cheated you out of $1,000.00. I know this. I have a couple. One involving an airline carrier and I have told the story…umm, A LOT.
So why is one really not that important and the other incredibly important? Well, we expect good service, right? I mean if we get a great experience, don’t we feel as though, “we paid for that”. So no big deal. Conversely, if it isn’t good…well, you get it. Another consideration may also be that bad is the new normal, we are so used to it. We have been sensitized that having a really bad experience is just part of every retail moment. But doesn’t that suggest that the one great time would stimulate the same enthusiasm to tell more than one person, because it is not the norm? Yes and I would still contend the sensitization of what retail gives us has also made us all a bit apathetic about talking about really good. We will always want to tell others about really bad, unless…
We start making ‘great’ the new norm. It cannot be just one thing. It has to be a layered approach.
- Your organization has to make it prevalent, part of the culture. Always talked about, always shared, always trained, always coached and always rewarded. By the way, it is impossible to over-communicate something important.
- It has to be completely visible. It should have a look and feel with everyone involved, from owner to inventory dude to sales rep. Every layer of the organization has to live and breathe it. It has to be celebrated with and by everyone who makes up the day-to-day.
- Yes, you need to ask the customer about it. So think of more than one way to get the information. It has to extend past mystery shops (another post on this gem) and surveys. Think social media and way information is shared and exchanged.
- Identify exactly what you are looking at, exactly what you are measuring. Know that and then train, coach and develop those skills in others. Build others beyond a general understanding and compensation for just doing it.
Does this all sound “tree huggy”? I can see how that may be interpreted. If WTR is your thing, then what have you done to make it as memorable as the incredibly crappy experience? Or is it just a metric?
I had a good retail experience today, want to know who and why? I also had a typically bad one, I can’t wait to tell you. See the difference?