No One Cares About Your Internal Company Contest!

Do you want customers to do you favors? If so, first you have to earn that right…

The other day, I was standing in the Express Lane at what will remain an unnamed supermarket.

Let me correct that: I was standing in the least express-like Express Lane at what often feels like the least efficient supermarket in a 50 mile radius of where I live.

I feel like fate was conspiring against me that day. The store was much more crowded than I expected at that time so all the lines were long. To make it worse, the people in front of me were not helping bag. There should be a law: if you are in the Express Lane and there is no designated bagger, you better get your butt down to the end of the conveyor belt and help bag your groceries. “Express” is a collaborative process people; let’s all do our part.

The employee working the lane also seemed to be pretty inefficient. As I eagerly awaited my turn, I remember thinking to myself, “wow, this is slow. She must be new.”

It finally gets to my turn…almost…because you see, just as I think the woman will turn her attention to my groceries, the man in front of me makes a comment to her that smacks of small talk. The small talk lasted only about 15 seconds, but for the love of God people! When the store is crowded and the lines are five, six, seven people deep, do not – I repeat: DO NOT take away the cashier’s attention with small talk! Especially when your turn is over. Move along people, move along! But I digress…

So now it’s my turn to be rung up by what I assume is a relatively new employee. Then I notice that she has a little badge attached to her nametag:

“20+ years”

Wow.

I would have bet money – real cash money – that she was new. I would have lost that bet worse than Apollo Creed lost to Ivan Drago in Rocky IV.

20+ years! But she was ponderous. I’ll admit, I’ve never worked as a supermarket checkout person, but I would guess somewhere around year 17 you would start to remember the code for “Red Delicious Apples” and not have to pause while you figured it out. I’m just saying.

She finally finished my order and now I am awaiting my receipt. It prints out, and then the woman looks at it, makes an indecipherable sound, and then hands me three stickers and explains to me that I have been selected to complete a survey. Yippee. I have no interest in this survey, and I am feeling for the people behind me who have to wait while she explains it to me.

The explanation (which in and of itself felt longer than the director’s cut of Blade Runner) led up to her taking the time to say to me, “…and there’s a contest between the locations so if you give us all fives for the service you received we can beat the other stores.”

Wow.

I think after she said that she mumbled something about me getting additional coupons if I completed the survey, but I had mentally checked out of the whole process a long time earlier. But clearly to her, I should be motivated to complete this survey to help her store beat the other stores.

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight…

Suffice it to say, I did not call the number to complete the survey. If I had, you can bet I would not have given them “5s” across the board, just so their store could, in her words, “beat Paoli.”

I walked out of there a bit stunned that I could get bad service and then be asked to take the time to complete a survey – not honestly either, but rather to just give them “5s” on that service – so that she and her store could beat a competing store.

I think there are some lessons we can all takeaway from this:

Do Your Actions Match Your Message?

In supermarket parlance, the “express lane” is simply a lane for people with fewer items. That’s about as far as they go towards making it an “express.” They evidently don’t put faster checkout on those lanes, or create any other systems to make it more express-like. They can get away with it because they are monolithic corporations that are happy with the status quo.

How about you? Does your “great customer service” just mean that you smile when you interact, or do all of your actions support the message? If your business name has the word “Easy” (or the not-as-cool-as-you-think version, “EZ”) in it, is working with you actually easy? If you are the “Bank of America,” can accounts opened in one states be easily accessed and managed from other states? (I’m not saying I have any experience with that issue…)

Words are easy. Actions to back up the words is what makes the difference.

You Do Realize That No One Cares About You, Right?

Ok, I am sure that some people care about you and your business. But the average customer or prospect who knows nothing about you? No, they don’t care. At all. Especially about your internal organizational contest.

Ergo, you should never try to sell someone on anything based on how it will benefit you. Always try to persuade people based on what’s in it for them.

The exception to this is if you are a boy or girl scout trying to sell stuff to win a prize. In this case the puppy dog eyes can get people buying stuff from you just to help you out. It works for kids. For adults, “sales through pity” is not a solid marketing strategy.

This is sales, service, marketing, and relationships 101, but many, many people seemed to have missed that course.

Are You Building Relationships?

Speaking of relationships, there are some contexts where I will go out of my way to help someone win an internal contest that has nothing to do with me.

A few years ago I became a regular at the bar across from where I lived (this should surprise you not at all). Being a regular, I was often served by the same waitress. I noticed that she kept pushing the Stella Artois beer on us when me and my friends would go in. When we asked her about it, she told us that there was a sales contest involving Stella. From that point on, I was happy to order Stella from her. Why? Two reasons:

1. I liked the server.
2. I liked Stella Artois, so it was no skin off my back.

Building a little relationship and not asking for much is a great way to get people to do what you want, even if it doesn’t help them out directly.

This doesn’t have to happen over a long time span. I posted a little while ago about getting some awful service from a towing company. The alternate tow truck driver I went with was nice and helped me out, so when he asked me to pay in cash I happily went three minutes out of my way to cross the street and hit an ATM.

On the flip side, the supermarket checkout person was moving slow and hadn’t built any rapport. Which was ok, because I feel that with her speed (or lack thereof), if she tried to build rapport with me it would have further delayed the process.

A little rapport goes a long way. People will help you out if they feel connected to you. Get in the habit of building mini-relationships with every customer and prospect you come across.

Be consistent, focus on the customer, and build relationships. The keys to business success aren’t complicated – you just need to remember to do them!