We all have good intentions. We wake up, stretch, brush our teeth and think "it’s going to be a great day!" But as the day goes on some of us get off track. We eat the donuts in the office kitchen, surf Facebook instead of working, make impulse purchases on Amazon and when we get home from work — instead of going to the gym we plant ourselves on the couch for a few episodes of reality TV. We started our day with the best of intentions, but got side-tracked and lost sight of the long-term goals.
It's the same situation with companies. No company sets out and says, "we're going to just do the bare minimum for the customer so we can increase our profits!"
When I personally have unfavorable customer experiences, I wonder what the conversations are at the top of the offending company. For example, let's take my local grocer Safeway. I live in a new community in the Bay Area and Safeway is nearby. Many times I buy a product from this store, only to take it home and realize it's expired. While you might think that's my fault, I don't believe it's the customer's responsibility to help the grocer with quality assurance such as pulling expired food from the shelves. Why doesn't Safeway have a CRM that shows what items are out on the floor, when they were put there, and when they need to be pulled. Perhaps they have one but have been slacking on using it. Not only is quality assurance a problem with stocking of products at Safeway, Safeway is severely understaffed. Safeway always has long check-out lines. Safeway provides self-service check out technology but it never works. There is only one employee overseeing the self-service check out. I got frustrated one night after returning home for the third time (six month old strapped on me) only to find another product expired. I wrote about it on LinkedIn and it generated 13,500 views. When I told Safeway about the LinkedIn post, they responded but didn't follow up, hoping I would just disappear. Clearly this is a company that just doesn't care.
With the competition of the grocery industry, you would think big brands like Safeway are stepping up on customer experience. However it's clear retailers like Safeway are actually cutting their investments in customer experience. You would think during uncertain times, or times of change, big companies would take more risks - making smart customer investments to differentiate the brand. Instead many appear to be freezing up, and cutting costs.
Competition has increased as a result of new markets (sharing economy, meal delivery services etc), new technologies (Instacart, Postmates, etc), and to put it bluntly - Amazon who is massacring everyone. And many retailers choose to hedge their bets by chipping away at their customer experiences. They save money today, but tomorrow will these retailers be here? No longer does being big save you from going out of business. Many retailers, in order to save their business, start by cutting.
Another example comes from Target. No one can ever find someone to help them at Target. Target is an example of a brand that just got too big and too comfortable. Even Target's COO John Mulligan said recently "To put it bluntly we are slow and we have too much inventory." Target will be investing $7 billion in the next three years to improve its ecommerce presence, but will they invest in the customer experience — or will they purely get into a price cut blood bath with Wal-Mart and others?
As we think about how companies cut customer experience investments during challenging times consider an episode from the hit show "Billions." The main character — Bobby Axelrod — is a self-made Wall Street Billionaire. He invests in a company called "Yumtime" — his favorite childhood pastry brand that - over the years had changed its recipe with less quality products to increase profitability. In one scene he's eating the pastry along with a younger colleague. The two chew the pastry with sour faces - clearly neither of them are enjoying it that much. Bobby tells his younger colleague, "Here's something they didn't teach you at Stanford, Ben. Whenever you can put the company in your mouth." This is a key idea for many executives that wouldn't want the experience for themselves they are actually providing to customers. Many executives don't even know what the experience is that they are providing. Perhaps they don't want to know.
Blake Morgan is a customer experience author and speaker. Sign up for her weekly customer experience newsletter here.
