General Information Archives

The Death of Black Friday

My 11 year old son asked me a few weeks ago if we could go shopping on Black Friday. He’s heard about it and was curious, thinking it would be “cool” to be shopping in the middle of the night.

Sadly, he was born a few years too late. Black Friday has died, as has a crazy holiday shopping tradition that my children will not know.

I’ll admit I’m not a shopper; I don’t enjoy browsing through the mall for hours on end. I’m more of a “get in and get what you need” kind of person. But, I did shop on Black Friday twice – I wanted to see what all the hype was about.

Even for us non-shoppers, there was something almost fun about standing outside in the cold at midnight or 1am, waiting for the store doors to open. For me, it wasn’t so much about the deals (well, it was a little bit), but more about the excitement of the start of the holiday season. Kind of like waiting to break out the Christmas music and decorations until the day after Thanksgiving, the “official” start to the season.

I saw my first Christmas tree on display, fully decorated this past September. Another tradition gone.

I get it – I really do. E-commerce and technology have ramped up the competition, and once a retailer thought to open a bit earlier on Black Friday – say midnight instead of 2am – it became a game changer. Retailers were out to one up each other, until we’ve reached the point of opening on Thanksgiving Day, starting at 5pm or 6pm. Walmart never closed – it was business as usual, with the door busters starting at 6pm.

While this trend has been moving toward the earlier opening hours, I was curious this year as to the customer response. Would they head out after Thanksgiving dinner, or wait to “celebrate” Black Friday how it used to be?

From unofficial reports, Black Thursday (or Gray Thursday as some are calling it), seemed to be a big success. From lines to crowded parking lots, customers seemed to respond by filling the stores. The customer has spoken, and this year clinched it – Black Thursday was born.

For those who didn’t want to leave the comfort of their homes, e-commerce deals were plentiful on Thanksgiving as well, and accounted for a large percentage of shopping on that day.

Fortune ran an article that got feedback from some of the top CEO’s to get their thoughts on Thanksgiving shopping. Both CEO’s from Target and Toys R Us reported that while customers were focused on the doorbusters, they also tended to shop for other items throughout the store – a big win in the retailers’ eyes. Brian Cornell, CEO of Target, visited one of the retail locations on Thursday to get an idea of how customers were shopping. He appeared pleased with what he saw:

“What I’ve been most interested in is what’s in the (customer) basket. You look at the people who you know came out for a specific, but then they’ve actually taken the time to shop other categories, which is really important. The fear here is seeing baskets or carts with one item.”

The National Retail Federation released its report on Sunday, and despite the buzz around shopping this weekend, they are reporting lower than average numbers this year. The report states that consumer shopping was down over the weekend, with 133.7 million consumers shopping in stores and online, which is a 5% decline. Spending was also down, at $50.9 billion vs $57.4 billion last year.

Some of the possible reasons cited include:

Sales started early: some of the big box retailers started sales right after Halloween, capturing consumer spend well before turkey was on the table.

Earlier openings: Black Friday was compromised by many retailers opening their doors shortly after dinner on Thanksgiving.

Economy is better, but not fantastic: while gas prices are at recent lows and spending seems to be up, consumers are still a bit hesitant. That, coupled with promised discounts all season long (think “Cyber week is coming” – what happened to Cyber Monday?), consumers may be waiting to spend, or spreading their purchases across a longer period of time.

While we have some time yet to see how holiday shopping 2014 will pan out, one thing is clear: Black Friday has officially passed away. There are some positives to this – there were little (if any) reports of grown adults resorting to violence over a big screen TV, and no one was trampled in the crowds – but the excitement of the start of the holiday season is not what it used to be.

Customer Feedback: When Enough Is Enough

Customer feedback is vital to learning more about our customers – if they’re satisfied, if there were any problems with the service they received, or if there are any ways we can do better for our customers.

It’s one thing to ask for feedback, but it’s another to do it the wrong way. What would be considered the wrong way? There are a couple of ways a company can go wrong when collecting customer feedback:

1. Telling a customer how to respond

2. Asking too often or at the wrong time

Here are a couple of examples:

Telling Customers How They Feel

I shop at a particular large retailer often, and am aware that they have a customer feedback survey at the bottom of the receipt. Often times an employee will point it out, along with the fact that I would be entered into a drawing. On more recent visits, however, I noticed that the tone changed. It may be specific to the particular location I visit, and maybe not. At the end of the transaction, the employee invited me to take the survey and “if I gave them all 10’s for exceptional service, I would be entered into a monetary drawing.” Well, what if I gave them lower ratings based on my experience? Would my entry (along with my feedback) be dumped into some unknown viral wastebasket?

In reading a story about a consumer who had work done at a car dealership, the author tells his tale of the dealership asking for feedback, with a reminder that the manufacturer may be contacting him as well to get feedback: “They also gently reminded me the manufacturer might be contacting me and they would appreciate my giving them the highest rating.”

Telling consumers, or even “gently suggesting” how to provide feedback to a consumer, can be off-putting. It creates a sense that they really only want to hear the good stuff, and could even be a signal that the employee is worried about less than excellent feedbaack. It could be their job is on the line, they are in a competition to get the most positive feedback, or something else all together. At any rate, this is one way to decrease the feedback, or even true feedback. A customer may be inclined to give positive feedback, even if it wasn’t the case, because they liked the employee and wanted to give him/her credit at work, they wanted to be included in the prize drawing, etc. At any rate, this can be a no-win situation.

Asking too often/at the wrong time

Back to the dealership article….this author shared his experience post appointment. Specifically, the number of requests for feedback was simply too much. The first request came shortly after returning home, and then there seemed to be a flurry of email and phone requests, along with a note that the manufacturer may be following up too. Consumers will give their feedback if they want to – asking multiple times will not get them to provide feedback, or it will – and that won’t be the kind you want at that point. One reminder if your automated system tracks responses, as we could all use a reminder from time to time. But, after that, just realize that you’re not likely to get feedback from that customer.

A colleague shared a story of purchasing an item online. When receiving the item, they were very pleased with most of it, except one part that arrived broken. An email sent to the company garnered a quick response – an apology and a promise to ship a new item right away. A couple of days later, this colleague got an email asking for feedback, and the next day, and the next day. Meanwhile, the item was not resent and follow up emails to the company were not returned. Yet the feedback requests kept coming. It was finally resolved, but by that time, the colleague was not interested in leaving great feedback. Had the issue been resolved first, or more quickly, or without repeated requests for an update, some really great feedback could have been left!

The last example leads again to multiple feedback requests. A story shared with me involves someone who had a great customer experience and, on her own, left a glowing review for the company on their website. Three days post-transaction, an email was received requesting feedback. And then, like the other examples, a flood of subsequent requests came, even though this customer already left feedback. While they were just ignored, it was an annoyance, and one that could have been resolved by dispatching the request more quickly after the transaction, and again limiting the number of requests sent.

Automation is great, but abusing it and/or not having great control over it can be a turnoff to customers, and defeat the objective of collecting customer feedback.

Do you have a story to share on customer feedback gone wrong? If so, please feel free to share in the comments below – we’d love to hear from you!

First Comcast, Now Bath & Body Works – How Metrics Can Hurt Business

Did you hear of this story last week? If you’re on social media, or in the St. Louis area, it’s likely that you’ve read or heard about it:

This story went viral very quickly, and highlights some of Bath and Body Works’ operational procedures that landed them in some hot water with the special needs community.

To sum it up, a group of special needs students was participating in a project that entailed visiting stores to learn skills related to shopping, purchasing, and other life necessities. All was well until they visited the Bath & Body works store, at which time they were not allowed entry. Why? Because the manager assumed that they were not going to make a purchase, and explained that by entering without making a purchase, the store’s “numbers” would be off, so they could not enter.

The fact that it happened to a group of special needs students made this a much more emotional story, as it appeared that the manager was making assumptions that were very wrong to make – would the manager have stopped other teenagers in the same manner, assuming because they were teens that they wouldn’t make a purchase? Or what about a mom whose toddler or young child wandered into the store because they like smelling the different products? Would they have been asked to leave, since it may have been “clear” that they were there to browse, not shop?

Peeling away the details a bit, it struck me that this stemmed from a simple operational metric that must be vital to a manager’s success at this retailer – the number of customers who enter versus the number of purchases made. This is well known as a conversion counter or traffic sensor. It’s a pretty typical standard, but one that must be so heavily emphasized within this company that it causes situations like this happen.

I did some browsing online to see what the general buzz was, and found that Bath & Body works did do some quick damage control by addressing the issue on their Facebook page:

That was a positive move, yet one that brought to light the very issue that brought me to this article – employees, both current and former, flocked to the page to share their confirmation that the company relies so heavily on this metric, that they may be forgetting the “service” part of the experience:

Of course, this is reflective of one manager at one of their retail locations, and may not be indicative of the retailer as a whole. However, this story was eerily reminiscent of the Comcast story that broke several months ago – when companies focus so much on one metric or training goal, the basics of customer service get lost by employees who, for whatever reason, take it to the extreme. In this case, the manager could have been facing poor numbers and was recently talked to by regional managers. Maybe the manager was close to a bonus (or being let go) and took things to the extreme. We’ll never know, but by relying on the success of the store based on this metric AND double teaming it with discrimination, it led to an ugly situation for the company.

A good lesson for businesses – metrics are important and useful to pinpoint strengths and challenges, and to ensure employees are meeting operational standards. However, they should never be presented as a “do or die” to the success of a location – it could end up hurting the company in the long run.

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