I met her before she made it to the counter and
asked how I could her help her. She demanded to see the manager. When I told
her I could help her she asked if I was the manager. I told her no, but I was
the manager on duty. She looked at me with disdain and said, "I guess that
will have to do."
She informed me that we had "ruined her
Christmas" since the gift she had bought from us for her son didn't work
when he plugged it in. She demanded to know what I was going to do about
the ruined Christmas. Of course I apologized and told her how sorry I was that
the product didn't work but I would be happy to replace it. She looked at me
and said, "That's fine but I asked what you're going to do about the
ruined Christmas."
I was pretty speechless. Other than replacing
the product and apologizing I wasn't sure what else I could do. Long story
short, she stomped out of the store with her new product but angry because we
couldn't fix her ruined Christmas.
After she left I was standing on the floor
talking to one of the sales associates about the crazy lady who wanted me to
fix her holiday, ruined because of some defective product. While we were having
a good laugh about the lady the daughter walked back into the store and
approached me.
She said to me, "I want to apologize for
how my mother just acted. Usually she's a very nice lady but she just gets so
upset when everything at Christmas isn't perfect. You see, she didn't have much
growing up so she now overcompensates with us kids. She was just so excited
about giving my brother that pinball machine and when it didn't work she was
more upset than my brother. I'm sorry." And she left the store.
It made me realize that our customers often
have a big emotional investment in the holidays and when things don't go as
they hope they can be extremely disappointed. The result is that they
sometimes take out their disappointment on us. After the daughter left the
store I realized I felt badly for the mother and decided that I would try to
fix things. Later that day I called the mother and invited her to bring her son
in the next day.
When they came to the store I presented her
son with two small gifts that we had specially wrapped for him. You could tell he
appreciated it but was a little taken back by the attention. I looked over at
the mother and she was beaming from ear to ear, clearly pleased that we had
fixed her Christmas. At that moment I knew we had done the right thing.
Remember, doing the right thing and making
the customer happy doesn't mean you're admitting that you or your staff did
anything wrong. You're just admitting that you like to do the right thing.
Our goal for the rest of December is:
1. Try to make as many customers happy as
possible.
2. Turn returns into exchanges, and exchanges
into sales.
3. Always try to do the right thing from the customer's perspective.
Here's wishing you a Merry Christmas - or Happy Hanukkah - or if you have no holiday preference a Happy Day!
Doug and Brian
Comments