5-Minute #2 11% & Customer Service

 Customer service is quite simple.  Big box retailers use 'big data' to know what people need.  Walmart is excellent in this discipline.  Lumberyards had terrible customer service and many continue to make you feel like you are inconveniencing them AND you must be an idiot because you don't know all the grades of plywood.

During the previous remodeling I visited Menard's, a regional home improvement store, at least once a day.  The closest store is not one of their mega-footprint outlets but the people are generally good.

Menard's regularly runs store-wide 11% off sales.  You just need to go through the mechanics of filling out a small form and mailing in your receipts.  As a frequent visitor during those promotions I also leave some receipts in my pockets and miss the cut-off dates.  The sales are frequent enough that you can wait for one.

Today I needed six feet of additional molding.  The smaller store has been challenged with having adequate supplies of the type I needed, and today was no different.  The rack contained three eight foot pieces, each with cracks half the length.  The location intended could certainly be pieced.  Gathering up all three I headed to the checkout.  The first clerk said she'd call someone when I asked for a discount.  They should have been culled and put in the trash.  She called the head checkout clerk; we waited a few minutes for her to show.  Immediately she paged some sort of 'front of the store person'...we waited a few minutes for person #3, also.  It seemed that I should simply leave at this point but I kept thinking of the the missing six feet and the next nearest Menard's.  Person #3 showed up and picked up another phone and said she'd have to get the department head.  We're talking three pieces of $6.92 molding.  We now have quite a bit of labor added.  After five minutes the department head showed up and I showed my frustration.  "So it takes four Menard's employees to make a decision on three pieces of cracked molding?"  The response "that's why I'm here" gave me hope until he picked up his phone saying "I have to call someone."  This would have been the fifth person involved in the sale.  "I'll just skip it."

As I approached my car I remembered there was one other piece of molding in the rack, less damaged than the other.  Walking back across the parking lot and through the city block long store I approached the cabinetry section and found my rejected three pieces of broken molding back on sale.

Obviously the checkout person or the front of the store person should have been willing to offer 11% off on something obviously broken since everything is 11% off every month and it would have made no sense for me to break three pieces of molding selectively simply to get an 11% discount.

A few weeks ago the store manager and I had a nice long chat about the difficulty of finding employees who actually show up, can speak English, can interact with customers and who can make simple and meaningful decisions in the difficult retail market.  It's not enough to give up on Menard's or this particular store but the management staff needs to understand how little flaws lose customers.

Other than that the weather is nice.