If you’ve been reading along, you know that in the past three months, we’ve moved two stores. This has been a crazy, hectic time in our life, especially since one of the moves involved moving the headquarters — an office that had been in one place for almost 30 years!

Along the way, I’ve learned some stuff. And boy, some of it really wasn’t pleasant.

You have to understand that we’ve got vendors we’ve been working with for years. Decades. So when they offered to help us set up the new store, absolutely we jumped at the chance. We’ve got strong relationships with these companies, and I was looking forward to seeing what they could do.

It was mind-boggling: mind boggling how much these vendors really didn’t care about us! In a lot of cases, I wound up with double inventory, when vendors ordered the same exact merchandise I was moving from the old store to the new store!

And I’m flabbergasted at the absolute lack of the ability to merchandise effectively! This is what vendors do, all day every day! Yet we gave them endcaps to fill, and they put product in — but no pricing, no signage, and they didn’t even check to see if the product was in the computer system!

For example, one guy handled canned pet food. He had five flavors to stock — and he arranged them horizontally, filling the shelves so full you couldn’t get a hand in there to take a can out. Think about that: arranging five flavors, horizontally. What happens if you want the flavor on the bottom?

Another display had dog harnesses all the way at the top of a 7 foot tall gondola. Kareem Abdul Jabar couldn’t have reached these things without jumping — how are my customers supposed to get them?

Honestly, Mr. Vendor, Ms. Vendor, all independent retailers want from you is for you to make it easier for my guys to sell your products! Now, my guys are in hot water too — they should have never let you out of the store with the shelves looking like that! Now we’ve got a new rule going on the books: nothing goes out on our sales floor if it’s not priced, in the computer, and signed.

We just want to sell your merchandise. Why are you making it so difficult?

You’ve heard of a tempest in a teapot?  Recently we had a dust up in the litter box — litter box aisle, that is!

I was standing in our North Hampton store, and saw a customer walking out empty handed.  That’s pretty unusual.  Generally when someone comes to our store, they’ve come with a purpose.  They have a mission in mind, and they come to us because they know we can help them achieve their mission.

I asked one of our cashiers what the story was.

“Oh,” she replied.  “She was looking for a LitterMaid.  We didn’t have one, but I told her it’s an item we regularly carry, and that it will be in on Monday.”

I looked around the store and discovered that we did INDEED have the LitterMaid on the shelves.

I counted to ten, and then went back to that cashier.  “Of course, you’ve got the lady’s name and phone number.”

“Oh, no,” she said.  “She’s a regular.  She’ll be back.”

This type of thing happens all the time and it drives me NUTS.  There’s two ways to handle this situation, the CORRECT way and the LAZY way.

The LAZY way was to do exactly what my cashier did: tell the customer we don’t have the merchandise, and when it would be in, and when the customer should come back.

What’s wrong with that, you ask?  Well, it leaves out the whole customer service part of the transaction.  Where in this model are we actually taking care of the customer?  You’re shifting the burden of monitoring when your inventory arrives onto the customer.  If they want to deal with that, why don’t they sit home and order their merchandise online?  They don’t need us for that!

The CORRECT way to handle the situation is this: (Assuming you’ve actually checked for the merchandise, and it’s really, actually not in stock!) Get the customer’s name and number, so you can call the customer back when the merchandise arrives, and when it would be convenient for the customer to pick it up!

This puts the customer service back in the deal.  You’re demonstrating concern for the customer’s needs, and demonstrating that you want to take care of them. 

Yes, it’s a teeny, tiny bit more work.  We’re talking about what?  Five minutes, maybe? To get the name and number and make the follow up call when the merchandise arrives? 

That’s five minutes that will make all the difference to the customer.  That’s the five minutes that will make the customer feel cared about and important.  That’s five minutes that’s critical in CREATING CUSTOMER LOVE.

Last time, we talked about the value of marketing to and retaining your existing customer base.  This is one example of this concept in action: we keep our customers five minutes at a time.