People Still Make The World Go Round…
Free time and me are like two ships passing in the night. Like a lot of you, the demands of family, career and just life leave much less free time than we’d like. So, two weekends ago when I realized there were no weekend sporting events for my boys and I wasn’t planning to pop open my laptop to push my corporate agenda, I decided it was a good time to spruce up my garden. Living in the Southeast pretty much gives me 10-11 months a year of green grass and flowers, so I thought I’d take advantage. After an hour or so of doing my thing, I noticed something was missing – pathway lighting.
Normally I would just whip out my phone open up the Amazon app and get my goods in two days (yes, I am a Prime addict) but I was in the gardening zone, so I wanted path lighting now. Not Prime same day now, but old school go to the store wait in line and get it right now. So, I check Lowes, Home Depot, and Walmart online and low and behold a Walmart 4 miles from my house has what I want and cheaper than the other two stores. I even check the inventory to be sure before I hop in my gas guzzling SVU that the lighting is in stock.
This is where both as a Walmart shareholder and customer the day went south. I arrive at the store and go to the gardening section and the lightening is nowhere to be found. I speak to a pleasant Walmart associate who tells me to check the promotional aisle as the lighting I’m looking for is likely there. I go to the promotional section and still no lighting. Finally, I decide to go to customer service and ask if they could have someone check in the back to see if they had the lighting. To my surprise I was told “sir if it’s not out on the floor then we don’t have it”. I explained to the associate in customer service that their site shows it’s in stock and her response to me was “online is not always right”. Annoyed, I asked to speak to a manager and was essentially told the same thing (seriously).
What was the most troubling to me about this experience wasn’t that the Walmart associates didn’t seem to be all that interested in creating a good customer experience for me; what was most troubling was they honestly didn’t seem to know how. I am no Walmart basher, I am a shareholder and normally I have positive experiences in Walmart. Frankly this scenario could have happened in any retail locale.
Walmart’s web site was really easy to navigate. Lighting research online was seamless and checking store inventory effortless. However, the in-store experience totally ruined the digital experience. The in-store associates seemed to have all the right tools in place except the empowerment to delight me as a customer. This is a classic example of no matter how good your digital tools are, if all of your customer touchpoints don’t work together for the good of the consumer, your brand experience suffers. Most consumers don’t give a brand kudos for delivering pieces of a good experience. Normally brands are judged on good experience outcomes. There were a number of positive outcomes that could have happened that day whether I actually left that store with the lighting or not. Mr. Young let us check in the back of the store for you or check inventory from a nearby store. Or Mr. Young, we don’t have it in store but let us order it for you and have it shipped to your home. These are all possibilities that would have led to a positive brand experience.
This just goes to show that no matter how wonderful a digital experience is – people still make the world go round. Whether it’s your UX teams designing an interface or your colleagues interacting directly with consumers, ultimately human beings still deliver the make or break touchpoints that your customers have with your brand. I did eventually get my path lighting, 3 days later after ordering it from Walmart online. But remember not all customers are shareholders of your brand, so not all customers will be so forgiving.