5 easy ways to aggravate customers
ften we talk about things that we must do in
order to please our customers. This is important dialogue. In
fact, so important, that without such thoughts we would become
complacent and our business growth, stagnant, at best.
Interestingly though, we are sometimes focused on certain
things, perhaps our own personal pet annoyances, all the while
oblivious to important things that cause us to irritate our
customers or even lose them altogether.
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My mother had six more children after I
was born. This meant that she would jump at the opportunity to
have me hang out with my Dad at the laundry even at a very
young age.
I estimate that of the roughly 17,100 days
that I’ve lived, portions of at least 10,000 to 11,000 of
those days have been spent in a laundry or drycleaning plant. I
barely knew what the other side of the counter looked like. But
my place in the industry today dictates that I retain
objectivity.
When I get my shirts back from my
drycleaner, I try to critique them like a customer would.
I don’t go over each shirt with the
proverbial fine tooth comb. I doubt that the average customer
does that. But I, like I guess that they do, notice annoyances
and I do not say to myself, “I remember that I did the
same thing.” That would be unfair because a customer
wouldn’t think that, and theirs is the important opinion.
No, my drycleaner probably doesn’t
make the mistakes that I list here, but some do. I see them
often enough. Being aware of them will help you to keep them
from happening in your plant.
Replacing a collar button at the wrong
place. You’ve gone out
of your way to stress button replacement and you have it down
to a science. So much so, that you have no worries about it.
For whatever reason, you are certain that every button is
checked and every missing or broken one is replaced. You can
still annoy a customer to the point that his perfectly pressed
shirt is unwearable.
The collar button must be put on at the
same place that the old one was.
Many times I have witnessed someone
skipping the step of removing the old thread left by broken
button and simply sewing the button on at the wrong place.
I was putting on a tuxedo shirt a couple
of days ago and I was wrestling with the top button. It was
very difficult to button this button. It is that event that
inspired this article, in fact.
I have no way of knowing if that button
had ever been replaced. I suspect not, I was probably a few
pounds lighter when I last wore it, but nonetheless, if that
button is broken or cracked and subsequently replaced, it had
better be put at the right place.
How annoyed would a traveling businessman
be if he was unable to wear a packed shirt because one of your
employees was too lazy to remove the old thread and instead
chose to sew the button elsewhere?
If you sew the button-down collar button
at the wrong place, Mr. Customer may still be able to wear his
shirt, but when he buttons down the collar of that shirt, he
will look a little bit like Bozo the Clown.
You are to blame, I’m sorry to say.
It takes a little bit of skill to sew the button at the right
place. I never said that this is easy.
Wrapping too many shirts in a poly bag. Most plants have some kind of rule about
this but the ones that don’t seem to think that the road
to profits is skimping on poly bags. It’s hard to comment
on that philosophy without sounding condescending.
Putting the best shirt in the front of the
bag or no touching up folded shirts. Can I call this a morality issue? Maybe business
ethics? Who do you think that you’re fooling?
I admit that a lot can be said for a nice
presentation and I am not downplaying that. What I am saying,
though, is that I consider it unethical to take a poorly
pressed shirt and move it to the middle of a bundle of shirts
so that the entire bundle, as a whole, is more presentable.
Sounds OK, I guess, except that a customer
does not evaluate your work by looking at the bundle as a
whole. Each shirt (or garment) must stand on its own merits. I
think that there are three possible scenarios:
1. If the
shirt that you wish to “hide” needs touch-up, well,
come on, touch it up! Don’t hide it from the customer.
Again, who do you think you’re
fooling?
2. Maybe the
shirt just doesn’t look good because it is tattered, torn
or stained. In this case, the temptation is real. Hiding this
shirt in the middle of the bundle may make some sense.
The customer, presumably, knows that this
shirt is not the flagship of his fleet and he isn’t going
to be surprised when he finds it nestled among his more
pristine shirts.
But sticking this shirt in the middle of
the bundle sets an ugly precedent. It tells your employees that
it’s ok to “hide” something. That scares me.
I opt for avoiding that altogether.
3. Maybe the
shirt just doesn’t press well. You know the kind; two big
pockets, pocket flaps, seams where they aren’t necessary.
Try as you might, the shirt doesn’t
look like you wish it did. You haven’t been careless.
You’ve given it your all. Maybe it needs to be hidden. I
don’t think so. Not even a little bit. If you’ve
spent time on this shirt and you still get substandard results,
you have a golden opportunity to shine!
Your customer service person needs to know
about this shirt and must explain the issues related to it in
your store at the counter. This is when a customer will be most
receptive to problems with their clothes. At this point in
time, you are being professional and informative.
If a customer finds this same shirt in his
closet on the morning that he plans to wear it and then
approaches you with it angrily, you will be not professional,
not informative, but defensive.
You may say the very same things, using
the very same words, but they will be seen in a completely
different light.
Sending shirts out with droopy collars. We’ve talked about this often
enough. The remedy is rather simple. But still the problem is
rampant. In spite of the fact that most of you have collar
cones, less than five percent are used correctly.
Add to that, the most frequent cause of
the droopy collars in the first place: failing to dry the
collars completely. These are easy fixes, but they do require
constant management and supervision. Anything worthwhile does.
Using grossly mismatched buttons. I am not fanatical about having every type
of button in stock. When there are 20 or 30 types in stock, the
typical employee does not go through them all in search of the
exact match. They stop looking when they find a reasonable
match.
This is, in nearly all cases, perfectly
fine. But what is not acceptable is grossly mismatching a
button. The completely wrong size, for instance.
Can you imagine the feeling of the
customer who has dressed in the morning, has just knotted his
necktie and when he goes to button down the collar finds that
the replacement button doesn’t fit through the
button-hole?
Sewing on a white button where a colored
one is expected isn’t a good idea either. The best
practice is to first check the tail of the shirt to see if
there is a replacement button there. If there is, it will be
the correct color, size and style. If you use one of those, sew
it at exactly the correct location where it is needed and then
replace the spare button in the tail.
“If you do what you’ve always
done, you’ll get what you always got.”
Donald Desrosiers has been in the
shirt laundering business since 1978 and is a work-flow systems
engineer who provides services to shirt launderers through
Tailwind Shirt Systems, 867 Spencer St., Fall River, MA. He can
be reached by phone at (508) 965-3163 or by e-mail at tailwind1@comcast.net and he has web sites located at: www.tailwindshirts.com and www.donsway.com
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