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What Home Depot just taught me about customer service

by Jeff Haden: Bestselling non-fiction ghostwriter, speaker and columnist for Inc.com.
As a business owner, picture yourself on the other end of a customer interaction. What would you really want to happen?

I recently bought a shower/tub combo from Home Depot for a rental property. While I wanted it delivered, that would take four weeks, so I said I would come back later in the week to pick it up. The Pro Desk associate told me to call the store the morning of so they could have it pulled and waiting at the front of the store.

I did.

When I got to the store four hours after calling - and being assured it would be ready - the customer service associate did a little digging, realised it had not been pulled, and went to get it.

Twenty-five minutes later, I was still waiting.

While I waited, I ran a little experiment. There were four other customer service reps in the Returns/Orders area, and I decided to see if a little nonverbal dissatisfaction would spark a response. Occasionally, I frowned. I shook my head. I sighed. As I did, I tried to make eye contact.

No one responded. Not a word, not a smile, not a sympathetic nod… if I did catch an eye, they quickly looked away, and from then on, never looked back my way.

I’m not criticising the employee who helped me. It wasn’t his fault the tub hadn’t been pulled. But it did seem odd that none of the three employees who weren’t helping other customers - and who had time to huddle together to watch a seemingly hilarious video - didn’t respond to my (purposely evident) frustration.

Clearly, I was someone else’s problem.

So I took my experiment to the next level: I walked over to ask if they could give me a sense of how long it would take. “Aren’t you already being helped?” one person said.

“Yes,” I said. “But I haven’t seen him for about half an hour.”

“Well, I’m sure he’ll be along shortly,” she said and turned away to chat with the other employees.

I waited about 10 more minutes before taking my experiment to another level, stopping an associate as she walked back to her counter.

“I’m a little frustrated,” I said. “I’ve been waiting for almost 40 minutes to pick up an order. I called this morning to let the store know I was coming today so it would be ready, but it didn’t get pulled, and now I’ve fallen into what feels like a black hole.”

“Who did you talk to when you called this morning?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I didn’t ask for a name.”

“You should always get a name,” she said. “I can’t scold people for not doing their jobs if I don’t know who to scold.”

“I never thought about needing a name,” I said. “She said she would take care of it.”

“Well, next time ask for a name,” she said, and walked away before I had a chance to say, “I get you would like me to help with your problem, but can we work on mine?”

The first associate came back five minutes later. He apologised for how long it took; finding the pallet (it wasn’t where the system said it should be), finding a forklift driver, blocking off the adjacent aisles, etc. had taken a lot longer than he expected. Ultimately, no problem. Stuff happens. “Sorry” goes a really long way.

But I wasn’t impressed by the other associates. The job of a customer service department - key word “department” - is to serve customers. If one person isn’t busy, why wouldn’t they assist a customer, even if he isn’t “theirs”?

They could have made eye contact. They could have said, “I’m sorry for the wait. Is there something I could do?” They could have stopped pretending I didn’t exist. Evidently, though, they didn’t see themselves a customer service department. They saw themselves as individual customer service reps. When it was their turn, they dealt with whoever was next.

And if there was no next, they clearly weren’t going to check in with the guy who had been standing in their area for half an hour.

Will that stop me from shopping at Home Depot? No. This was more of a one-off experience. Generally speaking, the service at that location is good. A couple of their associates in plumbing and electrical are fantastic.

But there is a larger point. As a business owner, picture yourself on the other end of a customer interaction. What, as the customer, would you want to happen? Not what would you expect to happen, but what would you really want to happen?

In my case, at a minimum, I would have appreciated an apologetic smile. Or a “I’m sorry it’s taking so long.” Or an “Is there anything I can do while you’re waiting?”

Better yet, I would have appreciated someone saying, “You’ve been waiting a while. Let me see if I can help.”

A customer isn’t a certain salesperson’s, or a certain customer service rep’s, or certain product specialist’s customer. A customer is your company’s customer, which means they’re everyone’s customer.

This means everyone should be willing, when possible, to get involved.

Or at least appear to be interested.


Useful resources:
BlackBird Media
Jeff Haden learned much of what he knows about business and technology as he worked his way up in the manufacturing industry from forklift driver to manager of a 250-employee book plant. He has written more than 30 non-fiction books, including four Business and Investing titles that reached #1 on Amazon's bestseller list.
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