sorry to see Sears go?
Maybe you grew up as I did where shopping at Sears was reserved for “special occasions” like going back to school.
You don’t need a process engineering background to understand that Sears DOESN’T keep their prices competitive because they have a good handle on efficiency AND effectiveness. For example:
At Sears, it’s not their decision to offshore their warranty customer service, nor their decision to hire variously experienced contractors to fix your appliances, nor their decision to OVER print receipts and coupons at their store that got them into financial trouble.Sears Senior Leadership’s biggest financial and customer loyalty mistakes are happening because they have NOT made Customer AND Employees Day to Day Experiences a top priority.
At the end of the day it’s not a big deal to you and me, we just go to another store. But what about employees like Al?
The short version, is it’s taken us over a month, 4 repair appointments, various appointment confirmations and 3 repair technicians to get Sears to realize they couldn’t fix our dishwasher and it will probably take us at least two weeks to get a new one installed. That’s inconvenient but not half as bad as what needs to happen for Al.
Al worked for Sears almost 10 years and to be honest, meeting him today to pick out our new dishwasher was the best experience we had with Sears in years. Now, when Sears inevitably goes bankrupt, Al needs to look for other work.
Here’s why Al’s next employer will be lucky to have him. First and foremost, he sees AND cares about the customer experience. He is personable, knowledgeable, efficient and effective (as effective as he can be with Sears old computer systems that don’t talk properly to one another).
Who is the next Sears? Is it Walgreens?When was the last time you consistently got a welcoming warm hello from the Walgreens pharmacy counter? You’re lucky if they even acknowledge you right? And how easy is it to find the tracking number on your auto-refill prescription online (hint you have to go through 2 levels of customer service to get it) AND most local pharmacy technicians can’t help you with auto-refills because they don’t even know that prescriptions are autofilled from Tempe, AZ. They think you went to Tempe to get your prescription filled.
If you know you don’t want to end up like these companies, check out Chapter Four in my book “Every Day is Friday ACTT Blueprint for Leaders and create your own Customer Line of Site Model (page 112). It’s a $20 book that could save you millions.