I have had some bad experiences with Wal-Mart but over all they try to be tremendously customer friendly and responsive.
I went into a local Wal-Mart (Lacey, WA) and found a display product on the shelf with no price and no boxed product, but there was a shelf sticker with a code number and product description (but no price). The next week there was still the display product, which still lacked a price, and no boxed items. I wanted to purchase the product so I took the display sticker, with the code number, to the ?service? desk and asked if they would look up the item and let me know when they would be getting more in or if the product was being discontinued.
The lady at the service desk, a supervisor, would not help. She said there was no way for her to know what was being ordered and what was being discontinued. I suspected that she was just brushing me off but I decided to wait a week and see if new product showed up on the shelf. A week or two later the product vanished from the shelf and a new similar replacement product was on the shelf.
A week later I was traveling in Colorado visiting relatives and while in a local Wal-Mart I checked to see if they had the old product. They had one on the shelf, none in boxes. This Wal-Mart happened to have, in the very isle I was in, someone checking inventory and making price labels with some kind of automated gun.
I asked the person about the product and they were surprised when I recounted the story of what happened at the Wal-Mart in Lacey. This person scanned the product, told me it was being discontinued, and told me no box probably existed for the display product, printed a barcode label for the product so I could go up and purchase the product at the checkout.
The Lacey Wal-Mart could have assisted me but they chose not to. The Colorado Wal-Mart gave great customer service.
A friend purchased some very nice stationery from Wal-Mart. She intended to use the stationery to send out some business letters. When she opened the stationery she found small black marks on most of the stationery. She wrote an email to Wal-Mart Headquarters about her dissatisfaction with her purchase. In her email to Wal-Mart she included contact information, home address, phone number, email address, etc. . . . . Within two days of sending her email to Wal-Mart she received a phone call from Wal-Mart apologizing for the trouble (Yes, a phone call).
A day later she received a call from the manufacturer of the product inquiring about the problem. (She had never informed the manufacturer of a problem, she had only contacted Wal-Mart). The manufacturer supplied her with replacement product and an abundance of free items.
A few days after that, Wal-Mart contacted her again to ensure the problem was being handled to her satisfaction.
While I know of many that have a visceral hatred of Wal-Mart, I would suspect that many of those same people have no problem supporting the new Orwellian big brother that is rising up, Apple.
Recent experiences with banks and telecommunications companies suggests to me the notion of the social customer is a myth. Everything we are told suggests companies that don’t have a social computing strategy that actively embraces people - and especially customers - are toast. Who dreams this stuff up? Let’s do a reality check:
RyanAir - one of the world’s most hated airlines. It has just bounced back into profit after one misfire. The lines at check in aren’t getting any shorter. I refuse to fly with them. Ever. They don’t care.
Vodafone - my tale of woe with this shower is not quite over. Last month the company announced it doubled profits. Vodafone has scaled heights of ineptitude even I could not imagine. So what?
HSBC - the so-called world’s bank that can’t automate the transfer of account balances. It had a rough 2009-10 but then so did many others.
Wal-Mart - you either fall into the ‘I love their pricing’ camp or you wonder at how they get away with practices that many find unacceptable. Latest profits exceeded market expectations. Whomever these people are that find Wal-Mart an aberration aren’t knocking a dent in the company. Not even a tiny ding.
Facebook - currently under intense scrutiny in tech media for playing fast and loose with our privacy. Some think the share price on Second Market is going nuts. Can anyone explain this apparent inverse relationship?
BP - the current target of outrage among the green brigade, a source of daily news and earner of 431,000 BoycottBP Facebooks fans.. You know what? Boycotting BP branded garages is futile. Despite a share price collapse, no financial analyst really believes there will be long term damage to BP. Even if there is, the rest of the oil industry will simply fill any void. After all, I bet not a single reader thinks twice about putting another company’s gas in their car.
…and on it goes. Feel free to add your favorite company to hate.
Yesterday, one of my friends got annoyed because Amplify requires a login. “You’ll hurt your reputation,” came the warning sound. OMG - I’d better close my account immediately. Guess what? I added readers.Do I believe that blowing a fuse on a blog will make one iota of difference to (insert latest telco/bank/multi-national name here?) Not a chance. Not even if 10, 100, 1,000 or 431,000 get up on their collective hind legs.
If the cacophony of sound around the social customer is for real (and I know plenty of consultants coining big bucks for spreading this stuff), who’s paying the tab for what seems to me to be latest tech craze crock? You and me.
Isn’t the truth that rather than have a socialized relationship with us, all suppliers of goods and services want to do are two things: sell more and profitably. If they need to look like a suck up to get there, then fine. They’ll do it. But puhlease, let’s not fool ourselves into believing there is such a thing as the social customer that brands want to hug and love. Or that being horrified at some lame campaign will hurt brands. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I’m looking forward to the day when a brand somewhere, anywhere has the nuts to add this to their logo: trying to suck less everyday. That I could live with. Anything else is wishful thinking.
