Retailers, you’re losing me

I’ve rant­ed about this before (see Brick and Mor­tars, Don’t Blame Us) and the sit­u­a­tion is wors­en­ing. It is get­ting to the point where if one wants to buy some­thing oth­er than an auto­mo­bile or gro­ceries, leav­ing the house is a fool’s errand.

A lit­tle over a year ago, I pur­chased a wrist­watch. My last watch mys­te­ri­ous­ly stopped and so I decid­ed to move up the price lad­der from my pre­vi­ous watch. Watch­es, like pens, are items that can get very expen­sive. I did­n’t want to go into the stratos­phere, but I believed it would be worth­while to get out of the sub-$100 range, espe­cial­ly if it meant get­ting a self-pow­ered watch that would­n’t have the poten­tial for dam­age dur­ing bat­tery replace­ment. That means a self-wind­ing or auto­mat­ic mechan­i­cal watch or a solar-pow­ered quartz watch.

Finding my watch

I did my research online and set­tled on a Cit­i­zen Cal­i­bre 3100. The two fea­tures oth­er than the appear­ance which I found appeal­ing are Cit­i­zen’s Eco-Dri­ve which pow­ers by any form of light, and the «per­pet­u­al» cal­en­dar, which remem­bers the month and year, elim­i­nat­ing the need to reset the cal­en­dar after months with less than 30 days even dur­ing leap years. Quartz tim­ing does­n’t have the romance of an auto­mat­ic, but it is much more pre­cise. At about $400 it’s not cheap but a long way from the four- and five-dig­it pric­etags the pres­tige brands carry.

Once I had decid­ed on the watch I want­ed, I set out in search of shops where I could pur­chase one, only to find that not a sin­gle Cit­i­zen deal­er in the City of San Fran­cis­co car­ried the desired mod­el. Of course I can’t expect every deal­er to car­ry every type of watch, but each deal­er had only two or three mod­els on dis­play. I asked at every store I went to if they had more in stock or if the watch could be spe­cial ordered. Most shop­keep­ers were more inter­est­ed in con­vinc­ing me that I want­ed some­thing else. Not one of them (with the excep­tion of the Cit­i­zen rep­re­sen­ta­tive I spoke to at Macy’s — but he was­n’t a Macy’s employ­ee) knew the watch I want­ed to with­out open­ing up a cat­a­log. I’m not talk­ing about know­ing specifics by the mod­el num­ber, I’m talk­ing about know­ing that Cit­i­zen sells a line of watch­es called Cal­i­bre. Spe­cial orders might arrive with­in two weeks.

Two weeks? Seri­ous­ly? I gave up, ordered it online from a com­pa­ny in Las Vegas and had it in my mail­box in three days.

That was dis­ap­point­ing, but I knew that there was some chance that I would­n’t find one of that year’s mod­els in a store. What con­vinced me of the sad state of affairs was what hap­pened when I tried to get the band replaced.

Fool’s errand #2: trying to get service

Tourneau has thir­ty-three stores in the Unit­ed States. I don’t believe they sell any watch­es under a thou­sand dol­lars, and sev­er­al mod­els they have on dis­play exceed the ten thou­sand dol­lar mark. Tourneau claims to have the largest ser­vice and repair cen­ter in the US. The Tourneau store in San Fran­cis­co does­n’t sell Cit­i­zen watch­es, but the store next door, Watch Gear, does. Watch Gear is owned by Tourneau, so when I inquired about get­ting a replace­ment band I was sent to Tourneau where all ser­vice is handled.

I walked in, wait­ed for one of the ele­gant­ly dressed sales rep­re­sen­ta­tives to notice me, and explained. The gen­tle­man who spoke with me was all too hap­py to get my watch­band order out of the way so that he could get on to oth­er things. He took my name, phone num­ber, the mod­el of the watch, every­thing he need­ed, then told me he would call me.

The wait

That was Decem­ber 26^th. I know, a ter­ri­ble day to try to get any­thing done. The store was swamped. When I had­n’t heard any­thing back by the end of the first week of Jan­u­ary, I dropped in to check on the sta­tus. They did­n’t have any record of any­thing put in under my name. So I chalked it up to going in on the day when things were busiest and most like­ly to get lost in the shuf­fle. So I went through it all again. This time I was told that it would take about a month to get the watch­band in. They said then that they would call me once it arrived.

It was com­ing up on Valen­tine’s Day when I called to check. I was told then that my watch­band was en route, and that it would arrive on Thursday.

The wait starts again

Thurs­day came and went and I nev­er received a call. I got sick in Feb­ru­ary and I was swamped with work for a while, so I let it slide and final­ly made it over to Tourneau to inquire about my watch­band in the begin­ning of April. I explained that I thought it was odd that I had­n’t received my phone call and the woman at the ser­vice counter went into the back. Every few min­utes she would peek out to see if I was still there, and assure me that she was still looking.

Now there was no record that I had ever ordered any­thing. There were a few watch­bands that did­n’t have any­one’s name asso­ci­at­ed with them, but none seemed to match my watch. Forty-five min­utes lat­er, I left hav­ing giv­en my name and num­ber a third time.

I have to give the «Ser­vice Expe­d­i­tor» some cred­it here. He told me that he had recent­ly tak­en over that store’s ser­vice depart­ment and that the depart­ment was a mess. Unlike his pre­de­ces­sors, he has actu­al­ly called me a cou­ple of times. Nev­er on the day he said he would call me, but he has actu­al­ly spo­ken with me on the tele­phone and left voice­mail mes­sages for me. It’s not per­fect, but at this point my expec­ta­tions are so low.

What dis­turbs me most now is the con­tent of his mes­sages. He told me that he has called and emailed his head­quar­ters try­ing to resolve the issue. Three weeks since we spoke face to face he relat­ed to me in a voice­mail that he has yet to receive a reply to his phone calls and emails. No one at his cor­po­rate head­quar­ters or the ser­vice cen­ter he works with will even reply to an email.

The wait begins again (sensing a pattern?)

As we start­ed into May I made a phone call to the store and was told that my «Sevice Expe­d­i­tor» was no longer in the ser­vice depart­ment and that if I want­ed to talk to some­one about a ser­vice issue that I’d have to deal with some­one else. The woman I spoke to had good news for me — sort of.

My watch­band had been ordered from Cit­i­zen, and had arrived—at their cor­po­rate head­quar­ters. We’re wait­ing for the folks at the head­quar­ters to get around to ship­ping it to their store. She told me that she would find out what the sched­ule was and call me back in the morning.

Two days lat­er I phoned and spoke to my new «Ser­vice Expe­d­i­tor» again. She sound­ed a bit annoyed that I’d called her so soon. I con­sid­ered point­ing out that she had told me to call the pre­vi­ous day, but I did­n’t think there was much point, so I just asked if there was any news. Again I heard that the cor­po­rate head­quar­ters had not returned her call. She told me she would call as soon as she had more infor­ma­tion to share with me.

Still waiting

As I write, that con­ver­sa­tion was ten days ago. Since I walked in to their store over a month ago I’ve sent anoth­er watch away for repair and received it back. With­out ever speak­ing to a human being, the move­ment of  my Fos­sil watch was replaced under war­ran­ty and I now have a back­up watch for when the Cit­i­zen’s band final­ly breaks. The Fos­sil is a nice watch and has sen­ti­men­tal val­ue to me (it was a gift from a dear friend) but it’s not solar-pow­ered and the date is small and hard to read, and it needs man­u­al adjust­ments at the end of months with few­er than 31 days.

I’m very tempt­ed to go behind Tourneau’s back and con­tact Cit­i­zen direct­ly. It would be the smart thing to do. I’m present­ly in the grips of a rather mor­bid fas­ci­na­tion with Tourneau’s efforts. I’m curi­ous to find out just how long it will take a sell­er of ten thou­sand dol­lar watch­es to get a watch­band from one of the com­pa­nies they do busi­ness with.

Right twice a day

When I was stand­ing at the ser­vice counter last time, there was a woman next to me who was wait­ing to pick up her watch, which had been ser­viced. One of the ser­vice clerks proud­ly hand­ed it over to her, she looked at it, and said, «it’s not run­ning.» This watch had gone to the ser­vice cen­ter, come back, and no one noticed that the hands did­n’t move.

This is the sort of thing that could hap­pen once — things slip through the cracks in any orga­ni­za­tion. But this was the fourth time in a row that this watch had gone to the ser­vice cen­ter and returned with­out being repaired. The fourth time that some­one at the ser­vice counter had hand­ed her the watch and said that it was all bet­ter. The fourth time she point­ed out to the ser­vice pro­fes­sion­al that the hands weren’t moving.

This all paints an unflat­ter­ing pic­ture. The prob­lem is deep­er than the fail­ure of one store to hire and train effec­tive employ­ees. It’s a total sys­temic fail­ure of a com­pa­ny that real­izes all too well that their income comes from sell­ing watch­es, not by pro­vid­ing cus­tomers with ser­vice after the sale. In some­one’s mind (most like­ly not the actu­al mind of an indi­vid­ual but the hive mind of the cor­po­ra­tion) cus­tomers are a lia­bil­i­ty. The com­pa­ny makes its mon­ey off the rep­u­ta­tions of the brands they sell, which com­bined with choice loca­tions around the coun­try pro­vide a steady stream of new cus­tomers. The job of the store is to get the mon­ey from the cus­tomers and get rid of them.

This com­pa­ny is, like so many oth­ers, a leech. It pro­vides no actu­al ben­e­fit to any­one. Yes, they have great loca­tions, but that’s not some­thing they cre­at­ed nor is it a ser­vice they pro­vide. They don’t hire peo­ple who are capa­ble of get­ting any­thing done and they have orga­nized them­selves in such a way that their employ­ees don’t have the pow­er to make any­thing happen.

If brick and mor­tar retail is to sur­vive, it has to dis­tin­guish itself with ser­vice. By «dis­tin­guish» I don’t mean do the bare min­i­mum it takes to by. By «dis­tin­guish» I mean that they have to make the expe­ri­ence of walk­ing into the store worth the time, ener­gy and mon­ey spent in so doing. It means elim­i­nat­ing a tran­sient sales­force of peo­ple who are accept­ing being under­paid while they hunt for their next, bet­ter job.

If you have a retail store, here’s a sim­ple test: are the peo­ple who work for you plan­ning on stay­ing for the next twen­ty years? If not, why not? It’s prob­a­bly because you’re not pay­ing them enough. If those indi­vid­u­als aren’t worth it, why haven’t you found indi­vid­u­als that are worth pay­ing more?

Put anoth­er way, if your employ­ees were cheat­ing you by pro­vid­ing less ser­vice than you expect, what would you do? Now ask your­self, are you not essen­tial­ly the employ­ee of your cus­tomers? I’m your cus­tomer. So as your employ­er I’m deliv­er­ing you a writ­ten rep­ri­mand. It’s going into your per­ma­nent file, and if you don’t shape up, you’re going to be fired.