Small Things That Make A Massive Impact On Customer Goodwill

Earlier this week, at around 7pm, I made a visit to Bunnings' Petone store. I love Bunnings - for one simple reason, they're dog-friendly - and I always take my little dog with me whenever I go to Wellington.

On that note, I had him in one arm at the check-out as I tried - unsuccessfully - to juggle him, my purchases and the swiping of my EFTPOS card.

The EFTPOS card hit the floor, and before I could even commence my awkward descent to retrieve it, the most-awesome young check-out operator had sprinted around from the till area, and had it in hand.

Like, before you could say, "Shouldn't you be at the Paris Olympics?"

(NB: Said check-out operator's name is Karen Marisol, disclosed with her permission.)

When It Comes to Customer Service, There's No Such Thing As 'Too Small' An Act of Kindness or Goodwill

As I've pointed out in my other articles congratulating an outlet or a customer service operative for some seemingly very small act of efficiency, quick-thinking, kindness or other brand of customer-focused action: There's no such thing as too small, when it comes to the engendering of goodwill by a store or any other type of service operation.

Advertisers and marketers go on about "brand awareness" and "brand reputation". Well, I think customer experience is at the heart of how a customer feels about your brand. And, as is pointed out in an earlier article on The Customer, almost everyone in a company - or even associated with it - is either hurting or helping a brand.

So, in terms of customer experience, I'd like to make two specific points:

1) Customer experience is cumulative. It's the sum total of little (or big) things the floor staff do for you when you're in that store that add up quickly, to equal your feeling about that store and the broader brand it represents.

2) Directly related to (1), is that - and it can be unfortunate - it takes a lesser number of negative experiences to undo the positive feelings a customer has from the total of their previous positive experiences.

The point is, every single act of proficiency, politeness, kindness or goodwill counts towards the totality of your "brand image" in a customer's mind, and their feelings towards your outlet . . . and whether they continue to ring your till willingly and frequently, or only when absolutely necessary, if at all.

So if you're in charge of customer service in your outlet or for your brand, you really should notice the little acts of goodwill performed by your staff. You should actively encourage them. And you should hold them up as an example for your entire team.

No matter how small. Because that's the whole point.

UPDATE

To exemplify my point (2) above:

I wanted the check-out operator and brand champion cited in this article, to know of its publication, so I rang Bunnings Petone to ask for the store manager, with the intention of emailing same. I waited on hold for nine minutes. Doesn't sound like a lot, but a caller can get a lot done in nine minutes, if they really want to . . . and a whole lot more than they can, sitting on indefinite hold.

But hey, it was 5pm and probably Bunnings' rush hour, so let's extend goodwill from the customers' end, too.

Here, though, is what really trashed the whole feeling of goodwill for me: The on-hold outgoing recording featured some really offensive message every 15 or 20 seconds. It repeatedly warns that "aggressive, threatening (and some additional form of bad) behaviour" will have consequences.

There was only so many times I needed to be predictively accused of such oncomely conduct before my Bunnings warm and fuzzies started to really wear off. And the fact that the female voice recording the message was employing the tactic of smiling when speaking to try to sound less offensive, doesn't work. Not after listening to it something like 20 times in the space of less than 10 minutes.

My question to management is this: Is such a significant proportion of your customer base such a bunch of thugs and degenerates that you need to absolutely hammer every caller with this highly offensive message . . . to the point of us all being able to recite it back to ourselves in our sleep?

The other option would be to organise your personnel so that you don't leave callers on hold for so long. Certainly, I would observe that both the staff members I spoke to on the way to eventually obtaining the required email address, sounded rushed to the point of brusque when they did answer. Which is actually quite unnerving for the customer on the other end.

So that's how easy it is to undo the "good".

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