Customer Service, my foot!

Landmark, Lifestyle, Globus, Westside, Odyssey…What’s common among all these stores – other than them being big and famous?

None offer adequate place for customers to sit and take a break while shopping. This, in spite of, of many researchers who have time and again proved that ‘customers who stay more in a store end up buying more too’. Yet, finding a chair in most outlets is akin to searching for a needle in a haystack. Agreed, some of these stores have a café tucked in somewhere. But that’s the point. Do you expect a customer to walk all the way to a third floor to sit in a café to rest – a café that’s probably slightly bigger than a bathroom – assuming the stores have one in the first place!

Even worse, stores like Landmark and Odyssey have removed their café from their stores. Reason: the cafes weren’t making money. Thank God these stores haven’t yet removed their parking lots since they don’t make money as well!

If the customer is the king, as is fashionable for us marketers to claim, then why the hell don’t we offer him a throne in our kingdom?

Don’t think the customers don’t care or not taking note of this. Here’s the voice of a hassled customer who finally found a store that offers him a seat to sit and place to rest. It’s a department store chain in the U.S. of A that is well known for customer service – Nordstrom. A chain that specializes in shoes, apparels and the works and is rated (arguably) the best in customer service. The customer in question is a Seattle writer named J. Glenn Evans, who penned this poem, entitled “A Place to Rest” after a visit to Nordstrom.

I followed my wife
while she shopped
From store to store
from window to window
she went

I the great man
was spent
The flesh pulled on my bones
like two bags of cement

At last I found a chair
Heaven only
could have been more fair

Of all the stores
Nordstrom was best
They gave a husband
a place to rest!