A recent Thursday served up a salutary reminder that it matters little how good your product is if your level of service is so poor it leads your customer to share the miserable experience on social media.
To set the scene, my precious laptop was suffering from an intermittent fault, and my reassuringly expensive raincoat was leaking. I was unable to work, and was wet to boot.
Scene 1: Phone call to Apple Careplan helpline. Characters involved are an automated message, Darren the Apple advisor, and me.
The phone rings twice before being answered with an automated message:
Automated message: “Hi Giles. Are you calling about the same problem you contacted us recently?”
Me (stunned at the personalisation of a pre-recorded message): “Yes”
Automated message: “I’m sorry to hear that. I’ll put you through to an advisor right away”
2 minutes holding.
Darren (real person): “Hello Giles, my name is Darren, how can I help you today?”
Me: “My laptop drops wi-fi access frequently and randomly”
Darren: “I’m so sorry, that must be really annoying. We’ll do everything we can to get you back up and running so that you can on get on with your life and back to work”
Darren continues to empathise, tries hard to solve the problem, and ultimately provides a Genius Bar ‘fast pass’ to get the problem resolved in a store of my choice within 24 hours.
I put down the phone feeling once again that a world without Apple would be a poorer, unproductive, less enjoyable place.
Scene 2: Barbour shop in Carnaby Street, Soho, some 20 minutes later. It’s raining outside. I’m standing in a soaking shirt beneath my nearly-new leaking Barbour outwear. Characters involved are Sales assistants 1 & 2, a customer and me.
Me: “Perfect weather for a Barbour”
Sales assistant 1: “It is isn’t it”
Me: “I bought this jacket from you a few months ago”
Sales assistant: “I know. I recognise it”
Me: “The trouble is, it leaks…”
At this point I peel off the outwear to reveal the sodden shirt beneath. As product demonstrations go I felt it was pretty convincing, given I was clearly soaked to the bone due to the jacket having the rain protecting qualities of own-label kitchen paper.
Me: “…& I’m wet”
Sales assistants 1 & 2: (Silence)
At this point they glanced at each other with the look of a couple of young rabbits who have just seen headlights for the first time, and who instinctively know they’re not good news.
And they did what the rabbits generally do. They froze.
I decided to help them.
Me: “Perhaps you could suggest how we could resolve this?”
Sales assistants 1 & 2: (Silence)
It hadn’t worked.
I tried again.
Me: “I think you’ll agree, this rain-proof jacket I bought isn’t rain-proof”
We stood together in uncomfortable silence for 4-5 seconds, broken by a clap of thunder and heavy tap dancing rain outside.
Sales assistant 1: “Oh”
I wondered briefly whether this response was in the training manual. I was sure the next one was:
Sales assistant 1: “If you leave it with us we can send it off for testing”
Me (strangely calm): “Testing for what? As you can see, I’m soaking because the jacket leaks”
Sales assistant 1: “They’ll test to see if there is a fault in the material”
Me (steam now beginning to rise from the sodden shirt): “Isn’t it fairly obvious to all of us here that there is a fault in the material?”
Sales assistant 1 & 2: (Silence)
At this point Sales assistant 1 reaches for a folder and begins to fumble with the pages in a way that we’ve all done when we’re buying time.
Sales assistant 1: “We can send it off for testing, but there’s no-one there until August 24th, and then there’ll be a backlog so they won’t look at the jacket until September”
A customer turns to face me. His face says “Good luck” without his lips moving.
Me: “Let me be sure I understand this. You’re suggesting I go away with the leaky jacket you sold me and come back in September when someone will test it to check if it leaks.”
Sales assistant 1: “Or you could leave it with us”
Me: “Until September?”
Sales assistant 1 (without a hint of apology) “Yes”
Me (glancing at the summer downpour still cascading outside): “And what do you suggest I do in this rain?”
Silence reigns, again.
Sales assistant 2 (he has a tongue!): “What did you expect to happen when you brought the coat in to the shop?”
Me (still strangely calm): “Well, I thought perhaps you might replace the faulty jacket. Or since you suggest sending it away for a month to test whether or not it leaks, which we can all see it does, maybe you could lend me a temporary replacement.”
The customer standing nearby snorts while trying contain a laugh.
Me (to customer): “Don’t waste your money, as you can see these things don’t keep you dry”
The customer heeds my advice, turns and leaves the shop empty handed.
Sales assistant 1: “We can’t offer you a replacement”
Me: “Why not?”
Sales assistant 1: “Process”
Me: “Process?”
Sales assistant 1: “Process”
Me: “I don’t blame you personally, but your ‘process’ is pretty ***ing stupid (sorry, I was beginning to lose it at this point) if it doesn’t allow you to replace a product that you’ve sold to a customer which clearly doesn’t work, don’t you agree?”
Sales assistants 1 & 2: (Silence)
A man can only endure so much silence in any one day. So I left cold, astonished and infuriated with Barbour in fairly equal measure.
So what have we learned from ‘Wet Thursday”?
1. Product superiority alone doesn’t keep customers happy if service levels are poor.
2. Apple is one of the most valuable brands in the world because it understands this profoundly and delivers it 9 times out of 10.
3. Automated messages deliver a more intuitive and rewarding experience that Barbour shop staff.