Sleeping on the Job

I bought a new bed recently. It was a thing of beauty, I couldn’t wait to get my head down on its fluffy pillow and slip off to the land of nod. However, far from being the thing that dreams are made of the whole process soon became the stuff of nightmares…

Where do I begin? Well the sales process was pretty simple; the sales staff seemed knowledgeable and very helpful. I chose my bed, was told it was in stock, as was the mattress, and they would be delivered in two weeks but I would receive a call in the next couple of days to arrange a date. I paid up (paying extra for assembly) and left feeling very pleased with my purchase.

Over a week later I still hadn’t been contacted so I gave the company a ring. After sitting on hold and being cut off for nearly 2 hours I finally got through to an advisor who told me my bed was out of stock and not to expect it until the end of December. (a good month after I was promised delivery) Oh, and there was absolutely nothing they could do about it.

After complaining on Facebook (the status I left my complaint on had 250 other people also complaining about anything ranging from late delivery to mattresses being left out in the street, to rudeness of call centre staff to entire beds going missing in transit). Shortly after I submitted my complaint I was contacted by a fabulous member of staff, let’s call him Peter. Peter realised my mattress would be in stock in a week so arranged for it to be delivered with a temporary base to tide me over until the frame I had ordered could be delivered, assembled and the spare base to be removed. Not ideal but it was better than nothing. If I only I knew that was just the beginning problems…

I won’t go into everything that happened, but here’s a summary:

Delivery of my bed frame was arranged, cancelled via voicemail but still turned up on the day it was originally arranged for without further notice
When the frame was delivered I was told someone would be along in 10 minutes to assemble it. After waiting for four hours I spent over an hour on hold trying to locate the bed builder only to be told (by an extremely rude advisor) the assembly I paid only covered the assembly of the spare base (huh?!?) so no one was coming and they were not going to take away the spare base
Complained on Facebook and within an hour Peter rang me and arranged someone to come and assemble the bed that evening but they couldn’t remove the spare base. Peter then went the extra mile by arranging a separate, external courier to remove the base.
While bed was being built they realised one of the drawers had been delivered broken.
I contacted Peter (he gave me the number to his direct line) and he arranged for redelivery of a new drawer but they were now out of stock so I had to wait another 3 weeks.
Bed was finally complete last weekend – 2 months after my original order was placed

Ok so a lot of things went wrong, and while not ideal, some of it was really just down to bad luck. However the way the staff handled my problems was what frustrated me. With the soul exception of the wonderful Peter, the staff were rude and indifferent. They couldn’t care less. These customer facing employees, the ones that represent the company, just couldn’t give a damn!

Peter may not have more experience than his colleagues, he may not have more knowledge around retail or be more senior than them. The difference that set Peter apart from the rest is that he truly values customer service. Instead of being rude, Peter’s focus was to try and salvage what he could of my customer experience and make the rest of the process as pleasant as possible. In short, Peter is a shining example of What Good Looks Like (WGLL) for this organisation.

If only this company understood WGLL for them in terms of values, motivations, behaviours and intellect they could turn their customer service team around. They could build a recruitment process around WGLL ensuring that they only hire the very best people for their business. They could use the WGLL framework to benchmark their current workforce; to understand who has the potential to be a future star with a bit of development, and the ones who don’t fit the mould who they should let go and allow them to be brilliant somewhere else.

If only this retailer placed more importance on their staff they could build a dream team and turn the complaints to compliments.

After watching ident after ident of this company’s television sponsorship over Christmas, seeing their ads all over TV, hearing them repeatedly on the radio it’s pretty obvious this company has money to invest. So maybe this year, instead of ploughing £ after £ into marketing, perhaps they should start investing in their people. Good service costs nothing and word of mouth, positive or negative, is worth millions.

So Bed Retailer, here’s one for you to sleep on. Your people are your lifeblood, the heart that makes your organisation what it is. If your people are brilliant the rest will follow… It’s not rocket science but it might just be Chemistry!