Conversation is nice, customer service is nicer.

(After a recent great experience with the staff at my nearest Lowe’s, I got to thinking about customer service, in effect, a brand’s weakest link. This is the first in a series.)

Lost in all the Thought Leader™ conversation hoopla is customer service. Forget for a sec ‘conversations’ brands try to have with customers on corporate blogs, the ordering process online, or even the thrill of calling tech support. I’m talking about walking into a store ready to buy and instead leaving ready to kill, all because the cashier didn’t give a damn.

Apart from the actual product, the contact you have with cashiers, managers and other staff is the single most important thing that can influence brand perception by customers. If you don’t think so, recall how many times you’ve bought something, but due to lousy customer service vowed to never to go into that store again.

Too many.

It’s great that so many brands are involved in—wait for it—‘social media’ like Twitter, but their presence there for the most part has been mostly about damage control. Actively crowdsourcing feedback or ideas that might lead to a better customer experience would be a better use.

One notable exception is Zappos, where not only is CEO Tony Hsieh on it, but the entire brand is encouraged to be on it. Customer service isn’t an afterthought with them, hence the “Powered by customer service” tagline. While the focus of this post is about actual retail stores, (which Zappos does have), and not virtual ones, the important thing there is that they thought about customer service right from the start.

Looking at all the hassles you have to go through when shopping, is it any reason you’d rather order stuff online? Because I can, I put together a flowchart breaking down the general sequence of that hell we all face. It outlines the events that occur anytime you leave the house to go buy something. Along the way, notice how many chances there are for things to go wrong when it comes to customer service. And this is before you even get to use whatever it is you bought. (Click chart to enlarge.)

Maybe high prices or poor store layout were to blame, but it’s almost always the human element that’s the problem. How many stores do you dread going into because “They’re all a bunch of f***ing idiots in there?”

Once again, too many.

Thing is, you can’t really single out one brand or chain because it’s a challenge they all face. Can’t really say that it’s just a matter of wages either, that if people made more, they’d somehow care more. I’ve seen people making minimum who hustle, so I’m not ready to buy into that theory 100% just yet.

Nor is it about things like the self-service checkout system a store uses or it’s return policies, important as those things are. This is about people interacting with customers. Forget the in-house ‘Manager University’ so many brands have, there are a few things that need fixing on the floor. There are some things which may apply to a single chain, or all may apply. Depends on where you shop.

(Next up in part 2: The Greeter!) (Image via.)