Orange You Juiced?
June 28, 2006
Welcome to all you new subscribers who are readers of TED and Electrical Wholesaling! Today's post will be of special interest to you.
Orange You Juiced?
"You can't just throw money out there if you don't have enough people on the floor to help the customer." George Whalin
George is responding to "The Big Orange's" latest attempt to bolster dropping revenues by offering cash bonuses to employees and stores who deliver exceptional service. Hey - it would work for me!
"We're after customer loyalty," says Home Depot's chief customer officer, Jesse Lopez. "Overall satisfaction translates into loyalty. We want to make sure that when people are having to make a decision about where to shop, they will cross over many lanes to come to us vs. anywhere else."
The program is called "Orange Juiced."
Cute, huh?
Lopez explains "We want to be juiced about serving our customers. I know it sounds a little corny, but trust me, it plays well. The response has been phenomenal."
But, to get back to Whalin's point about having enough people on the floor, doesn't it drive you crazy to see lines of people ten deep at 2 checkout registers while the other 23 are closed. The building center in my neighborhood has 20 checkouts. I've never seen half that many open -even on a Saturday. So, wouldn't it make more sense for a business to only install 6 or 12 checkout points since it's unlikely they'll ever use more than that? Wouldn't your perception of waiting in line change if you saw that 4 of their 6 registers were open as opposed to 4 of twenty? Under one set of circumstances, you might say, "Wow, this store is busy." Under the other, you think, "They don't have enough help."
Bottom line: we talk a lot in this blog about creating a dynamic customer experience, but the service has to come first. Without that, the experience is hollow and ineffective. However, great service is "invisible." As the Big Orange has discovered, it's bad service that gets noticed.
Lopez is insistent,"This is about providing excellent customer service."
Isn't it always?
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