This morning my bladder woke me up about twenty minutes before my alarm was supposed to go off. (TMI?) I am not a morning person so I was not pleased.

When something like this happens, you only have a few options. Tell your bladder you’ll get up when the alarm goes off and hope you don’t wet the bed. Get up and go, then try to get another fifteen minutes of sleep before the alarm sounds. Get up and start the day twenty minutes earlier than planned. (Or in my case, try to go back to sleep and instead write a blog post in your head.)

Can you think of anything worse for a non-morning person than having their bladder (or their dog or someone honking the horn) wake them up twenty minutes before they planned to get up?

How about going through the checkout with a cart full of groceries, have everything bagged and back in your cart, and then be told the cash register is frozen and you’ll have to go to the next register, and scan it all over again because they haven’t updated their hardware or software since Y2K, and then when you get to the other register the scanner isn’t working there either so you have to cart everything one more time and try a third register?

How about going to the big department store where you have been buying the same turtleneck for the past twenty-three years, getting to the department and finding the place trashed, having to sift through tons of shirts tossed everywhere until you finally find one in your size, going up to the checkout to find there are only two cashiers in a store of 150,000 square feet, and after waiting twenty minutes in line you learn that the shirts are an extra 30% off today only (if you can find another one in that mess in your size by yourself and are willing to wait another 30 minutes to checkout)?

How about reading an ad in Sunday’s paper, seeing an item you have been wanting for a while, and it is now on sale at a price you can afford, heading to the store that afternoon only to find your store never had any in stock in the first place?

How about walking into a store about 20 minutes before closing time and being told by the greeter (and I use that term loosely), “We’re closing soon so if you have a big purchase that is going to be a hassle you need to do it right away,”?

How about holding an item in your hand that is the right size, wanting a second one, and being told by a sales clerk too lazy to look something up, “They don’t make it in that size,”?

How about trying on a shirt, asking for a new size, and when the clerk comes back with the new size, asking if they have any more styles in that size and being told, “I don’t know,” before the clerk walks away never to return?

How about ordering a food item at a fast food restaurant and being told that it is cheaper to get a bunch of other items you don’t want with that item, so that you end up wasting food just to save money?

These are just a handful of situations that cropped up for me in the past few days. I asked the audience at the MAEDA presentation if any of them gave poor customer service, just treated their customers like crap. Not one person raised their hands. Then I asked them if anyone had received poor customer service in the past two weeks. Most every hand went up.

I tell you this to point out what is happening in terms of customer service and how that will affect you and your business.

The good news is that poor customer service is so rampant that it lowers the bar of expectation and makes the service you are striving to give look amazingly good.

The bad news is that as the bar of expectation gets lowered, so does the tolerance of the general public for getting worse and worse service. If you get complacent in the service you offer, you let the other guys win. You let them set the bar. Your slightly better service will seem outdated and expensive.

If you ramp up your service to such an amazingly high level that you surprise and delight customers at every turn, then you reset the bar in your favor and expose your competitors for the non-caring companies that they are.

The minimum would be to …

• Make sure you have ample supply of anything you advertise on sale.
• Make sure you have proper signage on the displays of items on sale explaining the deal.
• Make sure you keep your merchandise neat and tidy and sorted and easy to find.
• Make sure your hardware and software is up to date and functioning properly everywhere.
• Make sure you have enough staff to make the shopping experience fun and easy.
• Make sure your staff are trained to never say, “No.”

If you do the minimum, you’ll get the minimum. The maximum, however, has exponential returns.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Yes, all of those experiences happened in major chain stores, but not all big box discounters. A couple happened in a store that has had a few rounds of closures. A couple happened in stores that should know better. I would like to say that I had some surprise and delight moments, too. Unfortunately, the only surprise was that they didn’t suck as much as I expected. Not exactly reassuring.

PPS Yeah, that’s how my brain works at 5:41am.