Had several interesting conversations regarding my post about the home depot survey. One of them was a with a regular customer who said that service is hit or miss. He mentioned that there is one employee who is very knowledgeable, the rest aren't that great and one employee is downright rude.
One of the other discussions was about the brand. I was chatting with Fouro, prior to my post, and mentioned that I didn't care for their slogan: "You can do it. We can help" .
If you put those two conversations together, it doesn't add up. They say they are going to help, but they don't. They've lied.
It occurs to me that trust is something that takes a lifetime to build and maintain, but it only takes a second to destroy.
One of the reasons they need a survey? They've lied to too many people. They've forgotten what business they're in.
We've all tackled some type of home improvement project, some more grand than others. If I'm in the middle of installing a new faucet in the kitchen or laying down a linoleum floor in the bathroom, the last thing I want to do is run back out because they didn't tell me I might need a trowel for applying the embossing leveler.... or whatever.
Sure, you could argue that it is the job of the manufacturer to help with that stuff, however, I think that the hardware store (HD or Lowes) ought to "help" make sure that I have everything I need before I leave the store.
Save the money on the survey Home Depot. Send each one of your employees home with a customer and have them watch the customer work on the project they're buying supplies for. Actually, you could skip that altogether if you just hired people who truly loved home improvement projects.
Here are some interview questions:
1.) Which of the following magazines do you subscribe to?
- Better Homes & Gardens
- Dwell
- Architectural Digest
- Etc.
2.) What is your favorite show on HGTV?
3.) What was the name of Bob Villa's assistant on This Old House?
4.) What is the name of the guy who replaced Bob Villa?
5.) What is the difference between treated and untreated lumber?
6.) etc.
As much as I hate to use Wal-Mart as an example, their IT deparment does something very cool...
...before Wal-Mart's people actually write and deploy an app, they make the developer work in the job the app is being written to support. If Wal-Mart devises a new point-of-sale system, for example, software team members have to spend time working the cash registers first. Design empathy for software development is, of course, a wonderful thing.
Intuit, the makers of Quicken and Turbo Tax, have a cool program called "Follow me home":
Year after year, Quicken employees learn first hand from customers how to improve the product by visiting them in their homes. Through this "Follow Me Home" program employees learn how people use Quicken, what they like about it, and more importantly what they don't like about it. Wendy Padmos of Calif. was one of dozens of volunteer participants in last year's program."When the Quicken team came to my house, I thought they just wanted to find out how they could better advertise to me and people like me, but it wasn't that at all," said Padmos. "It was much more customer-focused. They wanted to know how I used their product, what was important to me, and what was not important to me. I told them I would like the ability to see my current spending against my average spending over the last 12 months, and now it's in the product!"
What do you think? Wouldn't businesses be less likely to need surveys if their employees understood customers better? What ideas do you have to help businesses better understand their customers?
Hi Jon,
great post! I read a book a while ago about an Irishman who's got a small chain of supermarkets in Ireland. He differentiates his chain from others by working on the customer service experience. He suggests that if you want to see how good the service your business gives to its customers, you should pass yourself off as a customer and go through the experience yourself. That means doing it incognito (of course). So he would go and shop anonymously in one of his supermarkets from time to time, and he encouraged various members of his staff to do the same thing. You have to make sure that you're treated as a real customer, and not just as one of the bosses/managers/employees who should get preferential treatment, but if you can manage that, then you'll get a pretty good idea of a customer experience. Personally I can't think of a better way of getting that information.
Posted by: Christopher grove | April 10, 2006 at 06:59 AM
Chris,
Thank you - and yeah, NOTHING beats first hand knowledge, experiencing it for yourself. What a great story/idea! Thank you for sharing!
Jon
Posted by: Jon Strande | April 10, 2006 at 06:32 PM
It has been a while since I've been in a Home Depot, but from what I remember I've never been that impressed with the company. The times that I've shopped there, invariably I have a question or two about the location of an item. However, when attempting to flag down one of the fifteen orange apron laden employees for 10 minutes (they always seem to be helping someone else...) I've had almost no success in getting a definitive answer to my questions. More often than not, I found it more efficient to wander the store searching on my own.
The trust issue is interesting, especially in relation to the survey. Thanks for the thoughtful post -- I'll be sure to check in here regularly.
Peter
Posted by: Peter Begley | April 11, 2006 at 01:42 AM
Peter,
Thank you for the great comment. Yeah, if you think about the shopping experience at Home Depot, the people with the orange aprons are like the "search" functionality. You ask them something, they tell you where to find it (hopefully). Not being able to find an employee or them not having an answer is like google being offline or not returning any results...
Jon
Posted by: Jon Strande | April 11, 2006 at 06:39 AM
Great entry - I just want to state that (IMHO) "brands" grown organically - not manufactured. Despite our best efforts to "change" consumers minds, they really are smart enough to determine when a slogan is real versus make believe. And trust is a major component in that cycle.
Posted by: Arnie McKinnis | April 18, 2006 at 01:51 PM
One more comment....
I was in a TMobile store the other day trying to figure out my bill. I have a family plan and wanted to know where if there was a place on the bill showing my "rolled up" minutes for the various phone numbers (they are presented in detail separately). It was a simple "Yes, and here it is" or "No, there isn't". The person "helping" me kept showing me the totals for each phone number - and I kept asking the same questions - getting the same response. Finally, I stopped him and said it was a simple YES or NO questions - which is it. He replied NO (and answer) finally after starting to get a little frustrated with me. Once again, customer service is not only being able to provide AN ANSWER, it's also about answering the questions asked.
Posted by: Arnie McKinnis | April 18, 2006 at 02:57 PM
Arnie,
Two great comments! Thank you!
I love the ending of the second comment: "it's also about answering the quetsions asked", how true!!
Jon
Posted by: Jon Strande | April 18, 2006 at 07:10 PM