The TEAM Approach

An Open Letter to Weis Markets

I have discovered that there are many little things that make moving to a new home a rich experience. Simple changes such as finding a new place to get your groceries can be an amazing journey of discovery. This was the case for me when we moved just far enough away from my favorite grocer to require a back up store closer to my new home. Welcome to Weis Markets.

My welcome to Weis was an unforgettable experience. As I stepped out of my car for that first visit and my foot touched the parking lot it landed in chewing gum. Gum in a parking lot can really happen to any business, but this lot looked grimy. I guess with 157 stores though, that is a “lot” of parking lots to keep up with, and I am sure that Weis is too busy to care about one customer with gum on their shoes.

On my first and subsequent visits, I was amazed to find that all but one of the cashiers were bagging or teaching customers how to use the self-service scanning devices at every register forcing any customers not willing to wait for the one and only human cashier to check out their groceries themselves. I even asked a manager about this, but was told they could not find enough employees. I was really curious about the ones that were already working there, but this did not seem to go anywhere with the manager who seemed to have more important things to do than talk to customers. Perhaps I am old fashioned, but having a human at a register is one of the last few services left that I am ready to give up.

So, I wait in the long line with the one human who is paid to run the register. Opps, Can you help me?  I forgot my “Weis Store Card.” What? You can’t ring it on a generic store card like my favorite old store use to do for me? I have to wait in line at customer service so they can look it up? You can’t even call them on your phone for me? Oh, you don’t have a phone at your register, do you? Gee that makes it a bit hard to help customers doesn’t it?

As I wait for ten minutes in the “Customer Service line” staffed by one frazzled employee, who is providing a whole host of services, I realize that 9000 employees is far too many to train and besides they won’t work for Weis long enough to make the investment in training worthwhile. What does it matter if you loose customers like me who drop an average of $120 per weekly visit into the one register staffed by a human. Who cares if I refuse, even in an emergency, to go to Weis and instead drive 12-15 minutes to the Oregon Dairy, where there are always humans who will ring me up on the “store card” and go out of their way to help me. Once they even sent me home with several bags of groceries and an IOU when I forgot to make a deposit and my bank card came up insufficient funds!! How does the Oregon Dairy do it anyway? They are a single store operation but charge the same prices as Weis and can actually afford to staff all those registers with humans? And where do they find all those employees just 15 minutes away? Something sure is fishy here. It must be the shrimp sale at the Oregon Dairy. I think I will stop by seafood and pick up a few pounds.

Service Quality Context: It's Everywhere!

I just finished a conversation with a leader in a top rated US hospital about creating a Customer Service culture. We both marveled at the comments she had received from her organization recently suggesting that customer service is so simple, why would their organization even need to teach it?!

Is customer service simple? Maybe. Is it easy to achieve consistently in most organizations? Definitely not. Most of us can recall countless examples where we personally witnessed (or were victims of) horrendous customer service failures.

So what is the solution? The problem, at least partially, may stem from our solution-orientation. We actually think we can fix this, and it will stay fixed. Customer service, however, is a moving target and we need to be working at it regularly. The more intentional we are about keeping service in the forefront of our organization, the greater the chances of providing consistently excellent service.

That of course is true, if we also pay attention to what Dave Erdman, President of Vital Learning Corporation, refers to as “Service Quality Context (SQC).” By SQC, Dave is talking about the various functions, policies and processes that impact service. One example of what of SQC might refer to is hiring.

Consider your organization for just a moment. Is hiring done in a way that leaves a candidate who was not selected feeling positive about your organization, wanting to spread goodwill about you, even though they were not selected? Does your hiring procedure begin the acculturation process even before a candidate steps foot in your organization for the interview and continue throughout the  process to enhance their comfort and integration in the first few weeks on the job?

As you can see, SQC can greatly impact customer service from dozens, perhaps hundreds of vantage points in your organization.  So should we invest time, energy and money teaching customer service? Perhaps you'll need to consider the your organization's SQC health before you can answer that question. But, what ever the answer, providing excellent service consistently is still a worthy goal that will differentiate you in times of increasing competition from around the block and around the globe.