Remember the last time you barbequed?

You prepared the food items carefully, lit the fire then added the food. You had to continue to check-in several times or you lost your dinner.

Likewise your retail sales crew has to be trained before they ever talk to a customer but you must continually check on them or you lose customers.

That’s why I created the HUDDLE program. It stands for Help, Understand, Develop, Direct and Lead Everyone.

So many times we know we should be helping our crew sell more but don’t know what to do. This program takes all the guess work out.  Each self-contained lesson begins with learning fundamentals and what is required for the 5-10 minute lesson.

Here’s a listing of each of the 12 HUDDLES:

1. What words to use instead of, “Can I help you find anything?” and how to get your crew to greet everyone in a personable manner.
2. How to use a prop to make customers relax around you.
3. How to create the expectation of succeeding and challenging how we predetermine if a person will like us or not.
4. How soon to greet everyone and how to get it accomplished.
5. What to say when you follow-up with the browser instead of “Finding everything ok?”
6. How to find one thing you can comment on
7. How to look inside at something you have in common
8. How to be comfortable sharing yourself with others
9. What kinds of questions to ask to help funnel customer choices down to a few.
10. What is a feature and how do you find them
11. The link to features is easy, once you know what it is and make it relevant to the customer.
12. How to paint a picture so well, the customer sees the benefits of the add-on you suggest.

For the cost of about $11 a lesson, you get actionable and proven retail sales techniques that break down the mystery of selling your merch.

If you need more information about the program, you can go here or if you are ready to change direction and grow your sales immediately, click the add to cart button below to get your first lesson.

If you provide excellent customer service and follow procedures, complaints should be rare.  When they do occur however, stay calm.  Breathe.

I know, staying calm is tough when your patience is challenged by complaining customers!   Use this four-step system: listen, acknowledge, solve and thank to get to the heart of their complaint and give them a solution fast!

LISTEN
Let the customer voice their complaint without interruption.  The biggest mistake is “second guessing” a customer gripe and trying to cut them off before they have finished their story.  Use this time as your chance to identify what it is they are REALLY upset about.  Remember, don’t take it personally.  It’s probably not about you.

ACKNOWLEDGE
Say you understand and are sorry for the situation!  The customer wants your attention and understanding.  You won’t lose dignity or concede to being wrong by making the customer feel that you understand their frustration.  Remember, you are saying you understand.  You are not saying you agree or will give them the moon.  They’ll also be more receptive to your solution.

SOLVE
Offer the customer real solutions, telling them what you CAN do for them.  Don’t dwell on what you can’t do.  You might begin by asking what they would like you to do.  They may actually require very little.  Sometimes we hear “I want my money back” instead of “I want to exchange this.”  Resolve the problem on the spot whenever possible.  If you plan to deal with it later, tell them exactly what you plan to do and when.  Make sure you follow up and do it!

Be careful how you tell a customer a solution.   For example, if you say, “Mary’s the only one who can give you a refund” – you have as much said, “Mary will give you a refund.”  This may or not be what Mary wants to do.  Don’t pass a complaint off for someone else to fix.  Listen and put yourself in the customer’s shoes.

THANK
And as always, thank them for shopping with you. Remember, if they are satisfied, they’ll tell everyone on Facebook, Twitter and Yelp just as they will if they don’t get satisfaction.

Using this simple four-part method of listening, acknowledging and offering solutions, you can handle any complaint!

Please comment below with some of your suggestions…

It was all easy, simple, and drama-free.

Instead of using a megaphone to scream at people why they needed to have the service, they use the magnet of simplicity and positive word-of-mouth ensued.

In July I received the e-mail that they were going to be raising their fees about 60%.

Last month, I received the notorious e-mail from their CEO Reed Hastings. He was rambling about why they had to split the company into two; one for streaming (Netflix) and one for DVDs (Quickster.) It seemed they were going to be charging more for less in a complicated way.

Today I received another e-mail saying it was all a mistake, like the end of Dallas’ eighth season where Pam woke up to her husband Bobby in the shower to not so subtly tell the audience that the previous season was, “all a dream.”

It seems odd in the wake of Steve Jobs’ death where everyone has been breathlessly saying how Apple made computing easy, that the company that made viewing movies easy could slip so badly.

I get they lost contracts for several big movie companies and that it costs a lot more than they used to for procurement of rights.

However, to pull it back as “ we must’ve misjudged our customers,” is the greatest hubris I’ve heard. (Even more than the #Gaspfail disaster  in Australia last week.)

If they truly listened to their customers they’d have found many had left just from the price increase notice, let alone the rambling e-mail.

My niece said it best last night at dinner, “I’m tired of getting all the e-mails from them. I didn’t select them to want to hear from them.”

At its heart it’s an Internet company. Point and click is silent. The surprise and delight doesn’t come from a person but how the product is delivered.

Yet at each turn, Netflix has decided the more information the better but the place they missed it is this…

We wanted a silent provider.

I would say that Facebook isn’t far behind Netflix with their constantly changing privacy settings and design changes. We want easy. At some point customers don’t want to hear from you or experiment. What they want is consistency and silence.

With all their high drama and counter-turns, the Netflix brand has been damaged significantly. While many think Amazon Prime could take over Netflix niche, now could be the time Warner or Paramount could mount their own services and cut out the middleman altogether.

The irony is that previously Hastings had said, “Businesses die all the time from moving too slowly, but not from moving to fast.” Too fast and too loud.

One thing’s for certain I believe, Hastings is not long at the helm. Silent or otherwise…

What say you?

Woman goes to shop in store with friends. Gets inappropriate help from clerk that is seen as pushy and argumentative. Customer complains in email. Company responds rudely. Social media flares up and company takes down their own Facebook page. Company confirms details and Twitter is ablaze.

The Scoop
According to the Melbourne Weekly, “Keara O’Neil emailed Gasp on Monday after an encounter with a sales assistant at the brand’s Chapel Street store. In her email complaint, Ms O’Neil said she entered the shop on Saturday with three friends to buy bridesmaid dresses.

She said the male sales assistant ‘‘barged in’’ to her changeroom and repeatedly encouraged her to buy a dress that did not fit her.

When the customer said she’d think about it, he asked whether it was the price she was concerned about. Ms O’Neil says she reiterated that she’d think about it, allegedly prompting the response: ‘‘With your figure I really think you should buy it.”

Ms O’Neil said she got changed and quickly left – but not before a parting shot from the salesman: “Have fun finding something at Supre.”

The response though is the thing that got the attention which as much spit in the face of the complainer, not wishing her to return and not seeing them as anything other than someone who never belonged in their store or would buy anything from them. At the same time saying how celebrities love them.

Complaints soared on their Facebook page so they deleted the comments. Things got so out of hand they deleted their own page!

Now a shrewd person has setup a complaint page on Facebook with 1700 likes. People are flaming the brand to do things to the merch and the store.

The word HUBRIS comes to mind – even for an edgey brand like Gasp.

Watch the Video Coverage : Customer’s Ultimate Revenge

There are a lot of moving parts in this story from the edge they want their clothes to have, their edge with who they hire, the edge with which they serve customers and respond to complaints.

Unfortunately, edges can cut you. Deeply. Especially when no apology was offered or communicated to date.

The Herald Sun just posted a screen shot of “Chris’” personal Facebook page which I’m sharing at left click to open and read his buds congrats.)

Several posters say, “No wonder people shop online.” It got me thinking, maybe retailers like you reader should be exposed to this story.

[Update Friday, Gasp is lapping up the negativity as a badge against those people who aren't our customers.  You can read more about their justification and love of spotlight here.]

[Final update: Gasp has said they are closing that location with no further word.]

Me? I call it the Paris Hiltonization of Retail

Apologies not given, a brand owning their rudeness, was it all a media stunt for publicity?

What would you do if you were the:

• 1) Salesperson and customers were treating you badly.
• 2) Shopper and salesperson was rude.
• 3) Customer service person handling the initial email complaint.
• 4) Person in charge of social media, i.e. Facebook

The Complaint Letter

Gasp’s Response Letter 

[Update: 1:30pm their Facebook page is up again and customer's just have to weigh in]

Please comment below.

Settled as customers to accept inferior customer service.

Settled for employees who couldn’t give a damn about our business.

Settled for products that are just rehashes of other products – made on the cheap for a price point.

We kid ourselves into making an excuse, “You can’t find a good (name of widget) anymore when we chose one for $20 and avoided the one for forty.  We make the excuse, “Good help is so hard to find and she’s the only one who I could get.” And the worst, we accept poor service as the norm and make the excuse to ourselves, “It doesn’t matter.”

We’ve got to stop settling because it breeds more of the same!

All this settling has allowed us the luxury to settle for despair. I mean, here we are in the 21st century being told that the worst is still ahead for kids, states, pensioners, unions, taxpayers, governments, stocks, neighborhoods, you name. Almost as if to make us lose hope. And many have.

But if you are in business, you don’t have the luxury of a disparaging thought.

Why are we settling?

Because we’ve forgotten what got us here. Innovation, hard work, drive.

The cause of lousy customer service starts well before we meet the bored employee.

Why are employees bored and allowed to still work? Because we as leaders aren’t excited enough to lead. We’ve settled into routine and settled for third or fourth best when the best is out there.

Why are so many customers and employees’ lives boring? Because we love to whine and feel bad?

No, I think human beings are innately drawn to the positive. But when they are surrounded by hopelessness they begin to think that hopelessness, fear and being anxious are the norm. They settle.

It’s like Superman believing he’s Clark Kent, Spiderman believing he’s Peter Parker, or Susan Boyle believing she could never sing.

It’s up to you readers to demand more. Of the stores we shop in. Of the employees we hire. Of the products we purchase.

But that all starts with demanding more of ourselves.  Your employees are desperately hoping someone will lead them to a better way.  If you are challenged how to do that, bring me in and let’s get going. Life is too short to settle.

Please comment below how you’ve settled or how you aren’t going to anymore.

I was fascinated every week by the Apollo pictures in the oversize Life magazine. I watched the death tolls at the end of every CBS Evening News with the man who represented unbiased reporting, Walter Cronkite.

I saw the Beatles premiere on Ed Sullivan. The day John Kennedy was assassinated – when my mom invited the Fuller Brush door-to-door salesman to come in and watch the TV coverage. The riots in LA, Detroit and the rest after MLK was murdered. The summer of love. Anti-war demonstrations. Woodstock. Kent State. The moon landing.

We baby boomers grew up on a steady diet of black and white commercials that included these questions:

• How about a nice Hawaiian punch?
• Aren’t you glad you use Dial (don’t you wish everybody did?)
• Wouldn’t you like to be a Pepper too?
• Is it live, or is it Memorex?

People really did believe that Sears had the best Kenmore appliances and Craftsman tools. Levi’s held up better than the rest and Keds sneakers allowed you to go farther.  It’s back when brands meant something.

It’s back when a box fan was made in America to last, not to meet a $20 price point.

Since there was no Internet, it was when we delivered the day-old news on our Schwinn bikes around the neighborhood.

When my mom shopped for fabric and McCall’s dress patterns. When my dad was the gardener using Scott’s Turf Builder.

Again, it was back when brands meant something.

Baby Boomers were the generation who built Procter & Gamble, Best Foods, Unilever, Macy’s and the rest. And we are still hard-wired to want to see shopping in those terms because we are the generation driving the retail engine.

Spending by the 116 million U.S. consumers age 50 and older was $2.9 trillion last year — up 45% in the past 10 years. Meanwhile, the 182 million people younger than 50 spent $3.3 trillion last year — up just 6% during the same decade, according to an analysis for USA TODAY of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data by The Boomer Project.

Photo by Kim Stiglitz verticalResponse

Nowadays CMOs have abandoned the very foundations of a brand.  Twitter is filled with stories about how marketers are paying people to “like” them on Facebook and getting tablet computers into employees hands.

But nothing prepared me for this pathetic example at left provided by Kim Stiglitz at VerticalResponse of GAP paying for people to just say they provided a 10 on their experience – to receive a 20% off coupon!

With all the talk about “transparency” when dealing with the younger generation, GAP is demonstrating they don’t really care about your experience, just lie and get your 20% off.

What an insult to such a once-great retail brand (coincidentally started in the sixties) now reduced to a click to receive yet another discount coupon.

They aren’t asking for what you really think or value, just kidding themselves people really believe this stuff bullshit.

Branding, it was how Boomers were made into the powerhouse shoppers we still are today.

The Retail Generation Gap – Why Premium Brands are Stuck, my new free special report for retailers, can show you that this new generation is being taught its more about appreciating clicking “like” than purchasing premium brands.  I show you the disconnect quickly and easily and ways to get them past that.  Snag your copy now, before your competitors do.

I had enjoyed an exciting couple days with my luxury client’s best ambassadors. Lots of leading, learning, and laughs. Got it? I was jammin’, juiced, joyful.

At the airport I had to get something to eat before the flight home and stopped at a quick service cafe. While I was looking at the menu over her head, a rather stern young woman barked to me, “NAME!”  Surprised, I said, “Are you talking to me?” “Yes, NAME for the order.”

As they were the only ones in the vicinity of the gate I ordered then she barked the drill sergeant orders to “get your napkins, condiments and other stuff over there, under the arrow and move down to the left. NAME!”  Like Charlie Brown in his Christmas special I was not going to let this person get me down. The food was good but I’d never go there again. In fact, I felt bad I rewarded such bad behavior.

Isn’t that the way when you’re a prisoner of a local provider you’d have to drive miles out of your way to replace?

The flight was scheduled to depart at 6pm so we boarded at 5:30, a prop-job puddle jumper for United operated by Colgan Air.

At 6:15 the flight attendant announced there was a “maintenance issue, we can’t get the pilot door to close properly.” Silence for another 45 minutes.

The woman next to me grabbed her phone to tell someone how her day “was just getting worse and worse.” When she hung up and started to bitch to me, I suggested it was going to be fine, maintain a positive outlook.

Still parked at the gate, it started to storm with lightening. Dulles was shut down and we were stuck. 

Rain stopped, pilot said we’d be able to get out shortly. Another half-hour of silence as we saw other flights leaving. Finally the captain came on, “We don’t know when we can get out, you can get off if you want to.” Cabin door opened, I left and began watching a movie on my iPad. After 45 minutes we were rushed back on the plane. To wait in silence for 20 minutes when the captain said they had to file a new flight plan.

We pulled out to the tarmac in queue and stopped for awhile. Pilot finally got on PA and said nothing he could do, we had to wait. After thirty more silent minutes the woman across from me called the steward over to say, “I want to get off now.” The steward said, “No problem, I’ll let the pilot know.”  That’s when it registered to me what was about to happen… I lost my positive travel attitude.

As he came back down the aisle I said, doubtful I would be going home that night, “That’s bull man, if we pull back to the gate it will be two hours for them to search through her luggage and get us back out.” The confrontation was broken by the captain, “Ladies and gentlemen we’re not going to Albany tonight as we are off at 9:30.” The plane pulled back to the gate in silence.

At 10:10 the captain said another storm had descended and we couldn’t get off the plane.  A few minutes later a woman at the front of the plane screamed at the top of her lungs, “I HAVE TO GET OFF THIS PLANE! I HAVE SMALL CHILDREN!”

After a few minutes the flight attendant opened the cabin door to the heavy rain and lightening and said, “Take your chances, we’re off.”

The rest of the night didn’t go much better but I won’t bore you with the details of sleeping in the IAD lobby or missed opportunities to provide service by United.  Here’s why I wrote this…

What went wrong to create customer service hell?

• Customers treated as a thing – something to get rid of quickly.
• Customers treated as stupid – something to dominate.
• Customers treated as inanimate objects- no communication.
• Employees putting themselves ahead of their customers.
• Customers getting their way only because they became aggressive.
• Employees having to get the last cynical word in.

While everyone has travel stories, and I hesitated joining the herd of complainers, I wanted to see if elements of retail hell could be lurking in your business. If so, notice it isn’t the actions that are the problem, it is what employees who represent your brand do to create customer hell-on-earth.

That comes from your hiring choices, training for procedures but also your training (or lack of training) to work with the public. The last 24 months seem to have escalated the downward spiral of customer service across many industries but it doesn’t have to be.  Checkout tomorrow’s post….

Slate covered this product in an article called, This Waiter Doesn’t Need A Tip that said in part ,  ”It works like this. You select what you want to eat on their souped up tablet computer and add items to a cart. You can make special requests, like “dressing on the side” or “extra bacon.”

When you’re done, the order goes directly to the kitchen, and the Presto tells you how long it will take for your items to come out. If you want a drink? Just add it on the console, and wait for the waiter to bring it. Bored with your companions? Play games on the machine.

When you’re through with your meal, you pay on the console, splitting the bill item by item if you wish and paying however you want. And you can have your receipt emailed to you.”

This is another example of how people are racing to embrace cold technology in a misguided idea that bringing the Internet to retail or in this case the restaurant is a good thing.

It’s not…

If you remember the post I wrote when I introduced my manifesto, Bricks and Mortar Retailing At Risk in the Digital Age, “it is a battle for a customers’ attention, respect, focus and trust. It will take treating the relationship seriously. If we can’t fix this, the divorce will be bruising because we will have taught the customer the answers, personality and fun of shopping lie in their own hands.”

So back to the Presto…

They have brought the McDonald’s drive thru order screen to casual dining based on an Analytical personalities abhorrence of dealing with people.

Technology makes everything more impersonal.  Who do you think will want to work in a restaurant like this? Much less eat there?

And who brings the gadget to your table? A personable, bubbly waiter? Doubtful.  But someone will have to bring it out and train the customer how to use it.

At that point, why are people coming to your restaurant if you are taking deliberate steps to minimize contact with them?

Training customers to look into the palm of their hand instead of at your (supposedly) pretty surroundings diminishes the experience for all. An

Good luck with this outside of the MIT crowd or cheap restaurant owners looking to cut payroll.

You want to raise sales? Stop looking at how to cut out the human and instead put it back in.

Better yet, hire me to speak to your group with meaningful, actionable steps they can put into practice right away so they enjoy their job more and connect with customers, instead of avoid them.  You can download my speaker packet here.

They wanted me to take a few principles from my book, The Retail Doctor’s Guide to Growing Your Business (Wiley) and give advice to do the opposite.

It was a bit hard at first to get my head around since four of the points are:

• Serve the customer.
  Without training what this means, employees can think you mean you have to be a slave to the customer which isn’t right.
• Concentrate 100% on the person in front of you.
  You can live vicariously through the person shopping. Its fun to treat yourself so make sure you can be in that place instead of being jealous or judgemental.
• Manage the space between your ears.
  I did an initial meeting with a client in Orange County once about a business makeover. He took two hours to tell/show me how a guy 30 miles away was using the same name and how he had hired a lawyer for copyright infringement. I passed, there was a reason this guy wasn’t successful.
• Leave your personal life at home.
  I get you think you can bring your child to work and “no one will notice” but we do. I get that you had a tough time getting to the bank but I don’t need to hear about it. The person who can only live in high drama is usually too self-centered to serve a customer.

As you can see in the video link, these are what they became for my evil twin to comment on:

Don’t serve the customer.
In the old times the knights would bow down to royalty as a symbol of respect. Make sure your employees see themselves as royalty; setting themselves above the customer.  That way they’ll give an air that they are doing the customer a favor.

Don’t give them your full attention.
Find other things to do, take them for granted, don’t comment on their Facebook or Twitter tweets. Ignore them.

Concentrate on things you can’t control
Focus on your competitors offering online coupons, your lagging local economy, other businesses closing, fill in the blank. Only concentrate on things you can’t control so you can breed hopelessness and fear in yourself, your employees and your customers.

Make them cringe
Bring your problems to work – the more high drama – the better. Bonus: blame the vendor, the weather, the president or the economy for anything that goes wrong. Just complain and be miserable to attract more of the same.

One of my Twitter followers direct messaged me, “Nice segment on MSNBC. I sure meet a lot of retailers who follow your advice!”

Retail is not hard to do right but as they say, the “devil is in the details.”

What say you?

I was contacted about being on TV to talk about it. They wanted me to represent the side he should not be in jail. Here were the points I was prepared to make:

• What would drive a veteran employee to do this?
• Employees are feeling more disempowered every day
• Rude customers feel no compunction about swearing or hitting employees. Why do they feel they have that right? Because they are usually rewarded with their discount, return or other special favor due to their bad behavior. Employees are disposable as long as they get their way.  That goes for how they treat teachers in the classroom to servers in a restaurant.
• This story is the canary in the mine; a wake up call to management feeling they can “get more from less employees.” Reality is, less is still less. While your employee might seem ok, it may take its toll on their home life, school or their workplace.
• Management’s goal should be to ask the questions like, “Tell me what frustrates you about your job.” Then listen and work to correct.
• Only by having the dialogue can you short circuit the “I’m mad as hell and not going to take it any more.”

Within 2 hrs the appearance was canceled due to the stock market dropping 200+ points. That afternoon people were calling Slater a “hero,” wishing “I could do that,” and lifting him up as an “everyman.”

He got a Facebook fan page; his 15 minutes of fame spread.

His actions allowed a bunch of people who feel stuck and trapped in their lives feel better about the fact they are doing nothing to change. That’s when I decided to start digging further; something just didn’t ring true.

Slater was called a name by a passenger and then over the loud speaker demanded an apology? She didn’t. That’s why he snapped?

As I saw video interviews with him, I heard him say that “I’d been thinking about doing something like this for 20 years.”

Hmmm.

Then came the revelation in the WSJ that passengers found him bleeding before they boarded. And no “abusive young woman” passenger has been found or anyone to corroborate his story. Now there is more evidence casting doubt on this guy’s story.

What’s a business owner to think?  My revised opinion on this guy is now:

• He is no hero to anyone.
• As the facts come up we find an unstable person trying to give the appearance of normalcy in a demanding position.
• The antics he used to quit were premeditated. He did not just “snap.”
• I’m just surprised the jerk didn’t video himself with an iPhone and Tweet about it.

Yes customer service is demanding but let’s not hold this guy up as the canary in the mine. He’s just looking to get on a reality show. Or a beer endorsement while “Take this job and shove it” plays in the background.

Do you have an employee about to “go off?”

When I was growing up, comedians used to call it “going postal” because of a rash of postal workers shooting other employees. Will we now laugh about an employee “going Slater?” I hope not.

Here are three clues you might use to decide if an employee is really happy:

1. When they are on break or behind your counter, do they talk about customers like they are jerks yet over-helpful to customers’ faces? Look, we can all have a few laughs occasionally about situations but if your employees regularly enter this banter it probably means they hold your customers with contempt – and probably you.
2. Do they always have “their side of the story” when something goes wrong with a customer? If they are intractable and feel superior, it is another sign you probably don’t have a team player.
3. Do they take demanding situations personally, like a customer is attacking them? You probably have a disempowered employee. These are the ones who don’t mention that the item might be damaged while selling it, telling the customer anything to get the sale or spitting in the food before they serve it. (See my post on Dominos in NC for worse.)

OK readers of the book, where do the personalities come into play with this? Glad you asked.

Slater is what kind of employee? Clues from his videos since the event: Look at me. You have to respect me. A (possible) charmer looking to make a statement.

Yep, an Expressive.

Amiables would never stand out that much – they might get hurt going down the slide, what would their mom think seeing it on the news?

Analyticals would never do this. Take a career and throw it and all the benefits away? Doesn’t make sense.

Drivers would never do that because their eyes are on how this would affect a carefully crafted plan to retire, use the travel perks and their position on various JetBlue committees. How would they explain this?

OK so as we’ve talked about before, Expressives can be a handful – that’s why you don’t want a lot of them. And they do need to be managed. Closely.

But that’s no reason to assume all Expressives will be problems. Remember their high risk tolerance can make them the sparkplug for your crew. (Expressives aren’t so hard to notice as this woman on the left shows at the Minneapolis airport demonstrates.)

So final thoughts, Slater is a cautionary tale about hiring, training and how a story you think you have an opinion on can be fluid.