The Tyranny of Incompetence

Message to retailers, lest you be tempted too soon to rest upon your laurels as newly minted experts (cover story) in the 1/2eld of customer-specific marketing:

Just as nothing can kill a bad product faster than good advertising, nothing will kill a customer-specific promotion quicker than a sales force with bad manners and an attitude to match.

Case in point: CompUSA, whose clever slice-of-life (“I’m here today with P.C. Modem”) network radio spots continually drive thousands of people to their neat, fully stocked stores for advertised specials on computer hardware, software, and peripherals.

Yes, this is a rant – about how a few bad apples in a retailer’s sales barrel can undo all the image, excitement, and good will a corporate marketing campaign works so hard to build up.

First, let’s hear it for the CompUSA concept. These guys not only know how to pull you in. Once you’re on the premises, they know how to bowl you over, too, with an eye-popping array of the latest in laptops, palmtops, printers, modems, scanners, software, gadgets, and gizmos galore.

Indeed, they’ve built a computer-goody supermart, where self-service, aisle upon aisle of merchandise, attractive signage and displays, and lots of impulse items get you to buy more – and fast, efficient checkout clerks are there to ring up your purchases and speed you on your way.

But like the deli counter in a supermarket, this retail brand’s biggest would-be moneymaker – the laptop, palmtop, and digital-camera counter where items are so high-tech they need to be explained, and so high-ticket they have to be watched – is also its Achilles’ heel.

The sad fact is that CompUSA’s “deli” – we’ve visited a few – is often so short-staffed, and that staff so bereft of the basic social graces (Salesmanship? Fugeddaboddit!) that even on a slow day you work long and hard to make eye contact with the non-verbal dolt who stands between you and the items you came to buy.

The willing customer’s only hope, as those around him roll their eyes and look at their watches, too, is that some will leave the queue and walk out – which they do at this store all day long.

Being in the market for some equipment recently, we succumbed to the enticements of P.C. and his sidekick and re-visited the aforementioned store. By picking a relatively un-busy time and day, this time we managed to endure a mere 10 minutes of invisibility before being waited on.

We asked for and collected the items we wanted, but had the effrontery to inquire of the deli-man, before heading for checkout, what sort of word-processing software might go with this particular model. Not only was our un-genial host clueless, he was visibly put out we’d asked – other customers were waiting, you see – and got more steamed when we asked that he open the box for a look-see.

Laptop manufacturers throw a lot of “stuff” in with their hardware, we were told, which they don’t necessarily list on the box. So the clerk doesn’t know/care; and it’s free, so why should we? Next customer, please.

An off day, or isolated incident? We think not. We’ve seen the same at such other branded-durables emporia as The Wiz, Circuit City, Toys R Us, etc. Women say that customer abuse has been a de-facto policy for years at Macy’s, Saks, Nieman Marcus, and other giants of general merch. (Supermarkets, where poor training, low wages, and labor shortages have made boorish behavior a tradition, were the pioneers, of course.)

Things are getting worse. Reader’s Digest in its December issue cited a Yankelovich survey in which 2 out of 3 consumers said retail salespeople “don’t care about me or my needs.” In “What Ever Happened to Customer Satisfaction?” the Digest says the University of Michigan’s American Customer Satisfaction Index has been slipping by more than a point a year for the past decade, to a current low of 71 on a scale of 100.

Back to CompUSA. Yes, we should have walked away. We didn’t, because (a) they had what we wanted, and (b) the price was right. We were dropping roughly the equivalent of the grocery bill for a family of five for 10 weeks.

Anyone who can remember what traveling across the U.S. was like when there were no McDonald’s or Wendy’s or Burger Kings, no Taco Bells, Arby’s, or Red Lobsters, will recall that you got what they had when you pulled into a one-restaurant town. If you didn’t like it, Buster, you could move on down the road – which meant go hungry.

That’s what was so deliciously hilarious about the classic Jack Nicholson scene in Five Easy Pieces, in which he outwits a tyrannical waitress by getting her to make an order the way he wants it. The message is that sooner or later, one way or another, the customer is going to win. If not with his wits, then with his wallet.