Richard Branson is famous for empowering his employees (http://sandbox.feedbackferret.com/2011/02/want-richard-bransons-success-empower-people-to-identify-problems-and-fix-them/). This week, I decided PC World needed to take a leaf out of Mr Branson’s book.
I bought a new printer which appeared to be faulty. So I took it back to the store where my first point of contact was a young lady in her twenties. She told me I needed to leave it with them for a few days and the technical department would look at the problem next week. This was not the answer I was looking for so I pressed harder to speak to a manager. She scuttled off to find her supervisor who was hanging around at the back of the store. His instructions were clearly to go back to me and repeat the instructions that I was to leave the printer with them for a few days.
I remained resolute and said no, I needed to leave the store that day with either a different printer or a refund. Back she scuttled to her supervisor. 15 minutes later, she found a technical person who agreed to look at my printer there and then. 20 minutes later, he finally agreed that yes, something was wrong with my printer. However, “the system” would not allow him to exchange it.
Another scuttle off to the supervisor and finally he was able to exchange it for another model. 45 minutes after my arrival, I left the store with a new printer.
Did I have a good customer experience? Now that is debatable. No one had been rude, no one had upset me. But the whole process had been long winded and so unnecessary. Had the employee at the front of the desk had the power to solve the problem then and there, I would have had my problem resolved much sooner. And why didn’t the supervisor come and speak to me himself rather than make his employees run around the shop chasing after him?
Whilst I fully appreciate that large organisations have policies and procedures to adhere to, I do feel that PC World could have done one of two things to make my customer experience better: Either empower all employees to deal with customer issues OR ensure that managers talk to unhappy customers and make them feel valued.
I would have given this feedback to someone had I been asked for it. Why does such a large company as PC World not have a customer feedback system in place? Feedback Ferret could help ….