Business Week Writer Examines the Death of Customer Care

And how to prevent it.

It’s true that large organizations order enormous quantities of goods at a time, but does this mean that it’s acceptable for businesses to alienate consumers whose individual purchases don’t add up to much? Image: customersrock.files.wordpress.com

(NEW YORK) - In a recent column, I argued that outsourcing customer service is unethical and bad for business because of the poor experience many customers end up having (BusinessWeek, 09/27/07). But there is another problem in business today that is not only much more pervasive than the outsourcing of customer service; it is also more insidious.

The problem is the increasing reliance on the Internet to meet the needs of customers.

I’ll explain the various facets of this problem through the story of how I’ve tried over the past several weeks to buy a new office desk.

The Big Box Blues

I’ve needed more spacious office furniture for a while, so I visited the local big-box office supply store, which I will call Grommets. After entering the cavernous building, the first challenge was finding a Grommets “customer care associate.” Even though there were few other customers in the store and it was the busiest shopping day of the week, it was hard to find anyone who actually worked there. When someone finally showed up, I told him that I’d like to buy a desk.

“OK. Look around at our selection and then order what you want on the Internet."

“Why can’t I buy it from this store?” I asked.

“It’s faster if you use our Web site. For one thing, we don’t stock everything that we have on display. It’s better if you take a look at our catalog, and then use our computer to order what you want.”

The store, therefore, is nothing more than a showcase for office furniture rather than a place where you can purchase what you want then and there. If you’d like anything besides pens, paper, or paper clips, you’re out of luck. Whoever thought that buying a desk would be no different than buying a car?

When I pressed the associate for specific information about a few of the pieces on display, he admitted that the only thing he knew about them was what he himself had read on the Internet. He continued to encourage me to go online or look through the catalog the store had on site.

“I think I’ll just take a catalog home and look through it there,” I said, since the prospect of sitting in the middle of a garishly lighted warehouse leafing through a magazine wasn’t especially appealing.

“You can’t do that. We just have one.” He pointed to a desk that had the catalog glued to it. “Help yourself.”

Well, at least they had an electronic massager attached to the chair, which made the indignity of the whole affair a little easier to bear.

When I found a desk I wanted, I walked over to the kiosk where the store made one of its computers available for customers. Two young men were huddled around it. “What do you want?” one of them mumbled.

"I’d like to order something when you’re through.”

“We’re filling out an application,” the other one said. They had already been there awhile, I’d noticed, so either they were playing around, or they just wanted to take their time. It clearly was going to be a long wait.

Becoming increasingly annoyed by what should have been a very simple task, I headed to the customer service center, a misnomer if ever there were one. You see, after the clerk behind the desk pointed to yet another PC I could use to place my order, and I began typing in the SKU for the item I wanted, another associate grabbed the keyboard out of my hands.

“Excuse me?” I blurted out. It was as though I was an unsuspecting patsy on some reality show about the horrors of shopping in the 21st century. “I’m in the middle of ordering something.”

“I just need it for a minute,” she said with a huff.

“But I’m about to buy something from you! What kind of store is this?”

Since she wanted what she wanted when she wanted it, I chose to give up the struggle. “All right, you can have the keyboard. I guess you’re not really interested in my business, are you?”

She shrugged her shoulders, and the manager looked on without a word. I left the store shaking my head in disbelief over what had just occurred. Since no one there had had a financial incentive for making a sale, I suppose I couldn’t blame them for letting a customer walk out the door. From a corporate point of view, though, is it right to let even a small sale slip by because of sheer apathy? Shouldn’t every customer be treated with respect, no matter how small his or her purchase is? Does it make sense to give customer service representatives no more information about their company’s products than what is available on the Internet?

Welcome to business in the age of the big box store.

What the Devil is Going on?

It doesn’t require an MBA from Harvard to see that something is seriously wrong with a business model that requires customers to treat stores like virtual catalogs and then retreat to the Internet to purchase what they want. In an earlier column , I described the dangers we face individually and collectively because of our obsession with electronic gadgets (BusinessWeek, 06/28/07). It’s bad enough that we’re choosing to spend more and more time glued to our cell phones, PDAs, and MP3 players instead of with other people. What’s worse is being forced to go online when we want to buy something as simple and basic as a desk.

This business strategy isn’t limited to the world of office supplies. The shift toward online commerce and away from person-to-person contact is occurring in every industry, from clothing to groceries. If you’re a fellow book lover, you know all too well how the slow demise of independent bookstores is affecting customer service: the era of the knowledgeable employee who, like you, knows and cares about books is almost over. It’s as though the individual customer is now a nuisance, a fly to be swatted away while the bigger game—such as corporations and universities--waits over the horizon.

It’s true that large organizations order enormous quantities of goods at a time, but does this mean that it’s acceptable for businesses to alienate consumers whose individual purchases don’t add up to much? Focusing exclusively on big-ticket purchasers may result in a healthy bottom line, but those profits come at the expense of small-time customers like you and me. Who wants an experience like the one I had at Grommets? Are we nothing more than a drain on a company’s physical and human resources?

The mom-and-pop stores some of us knew growing up simply can’t compete with the big boxes, and their numbers will never be what they once were. Still, global companies like Grommets should take a page from the stores they have displaced and recognize that caring about customers is a value that should never take a back seat to moving merchandise by any means necessary. The failure to provide excellent customer service, not just on the phone but in person, is a failure of management at the highest levels.

Yes, a business can be profitable by focusing on moving large quantities of product, but it might be even more so if it treated small-ticket customers with respect, too. This means several things:

* The Internet should be an adjunct to, not a substitute for, a knowledgeable, friendly sales staff. Salespeople should know first-hand what it is they are selling and should use the Internet as a back-up, not as a primary tool for informing customers.

* The company’s product should be valued for what it is, and not merely for what it represents (i.e., money in the bank). A desk isn’t just a slab of wood and a few hunks of metal: it is, for many of us, the single most important piece of furniture in the working day. A book isn’t just bound paper splattered with ink; it is, for a lot of people, an essential component of living a better life. Thus, one of the questions an employer should ask a job applicant is, “What does [our product] mean to you?” If you suspect you’re getting a snow job, then this isn’t a person you want on your team.

* If an employee doesn’t know the answer to a customer’s question, the response should be, “I’ll find out,” rather than a helpless shrug of the shoulders. When you lose a sale, you should take it personally. Sometimes. “This is business, not personal,” was a great line in The Godfather, but in an increasingly impersonal world, customers value contact with real human beings. If a customer chooses not to buy from you, can you honestly say that it was *their* hang-ups that got in the way? You know in your heart of hearts when you’ve given it your level best and when you haven’t. I submit that all of us could do a better job, whether we’re in sales or not.

The radical idea I’m proposing here—that everyone working in a business should value each and every customer, with all that this implies—may very well lead to a healthier bottom line. Then again, it may not. Profits do matter, but so does treating a customer with respect—whether on the phone or face to face.

About the Author

Bruce Weinstein, Ph.D., The Ethics Guy,® writes the ethics column for BusinessWeek.com. He has appeared as an ethics analyst on The Today Show, Good Morning America, Anderson Cooper 360, Lou Dobbs Tonight, American Morning, The O'Reilly Factor, FOX & Friends, MSNBC Live, Bloomberg Television's Personal Finance, CNBC’s Power Lunch, and many other national television programs. For more information, visit TheEthicsGuy.com.