Shoe Stores and Irrationality

When I see something that doesn't make sense, there's a compulsion in me to point it out and discuss what could be done to rectify it.  You can imagine the chagrin of my husband, children, friends, or anyone with me feels when I launch one of these 'teaching moments'.

Again and again, I've had a conversation with someone in a shoe store that goes something like this.

"Do you have this shoe in my size?"

"Nope, we're all sold out.  We only have that in sizes smaller than 6 or larger than 9.  Yours is the most common size and it always goes first. "

"You know the distribution of purchases from years of experience. So why don't you order lots more in the common sizes?"

"Oh, we do, but we never order enough.  There's only room for so many pairs in our inventory and we have to order one of each shoe in each size at a minimum."

"Why?  You know you have to sell off those other sizes at deep discount at the end of the season.  In the meantime, you've lost sales of the popular sizes because of unavailability.  Why don't you just keep bumping up the number of pairs in the common sizes and have some gaps in your availability of the less popular sizes. "

"Well, we have to be able to serve customers with availability of shoes in their sizes, so we couldn't not order a full supply of those big and small sizes."

"BUT YOU'VE JUST FAILED TO SERVE ME WITH MY SIZE, BECAUSE YOU'RE GIVING SHELF SPACE TO SIZES YOU'RE NEVER GOING TO SELL AT FULL PRICE!!!  AM I NOT A CUSTOMER TOO?"

Silence.

Argh.  I've never actually shouted the way the all-caps suggests, but I've certainly felt like it.  I will continue my one-woman campaign to bring logic to shoe store inventory planning.

What's your favourite example of irrational behaviour out there?

A new definition of service

The service in India has been over the top. Our guides have told us that Indians are taught to render utmost respect to parents, teachers and guests. 'Guests are golden', as he says. At the Rambaugh Palace in Jaipur, they said they wanted us to feel like a Maharajah and Maharanee - after all, we were staying in the palace of a Maharajah.

At every hotel on arrival a bevy of hotel staff will gather, to present flowers, to offer cold drinks and cold cloths, and to mark our foreheads with an auspicious mark. At the Rambaugh Palace, an impressive gentleman with a vast flowing mustache escorted me from the car with an ornate ( antique?) umbrella to the stairs; as I walked up the stairs, a lovely lady in a sari was throwing beautifully scented rose petals over my head.

 Flowers are a constant theme. Every lobby will have flowers, or elaborately arranged flower petals, floating on water in shallow bowls, often with lit candles at night. At the Rambaugh Palace one afternoon, I heard music and went outside to see a band playing, trumpets and drums, a man dancing with a horse body hanging from him(in bare feet on black pavement) and a line- up of hotel staff in the driveway to greet a woman arriving in the hotel's antique car. I couldn't determine if she was a celebrity, or had maybe just booked a more majestic room. One evening, there was a performance on the patio.

Everyone has a constant eye on you, to see if there is anything they can do to help. At breakfast one day, I gazed yearningly at the Cambazola on the cheese board. One of the hovering waiters offered to cut a slice but I explained I didn't dare eat cheese (lactose intolerance) just before going out touring. Lo and behold, when we returned, there was the Cambozola, crackers and dates in the room. My iPad charger gave out in Jaipur and the hotel lent me a charger. As we were leaving at nine there were no stores open to buy a new one, since the stores open at 11. The upshot was I left with their charger which they would replace later. Good problem solving. The woman who did this had a delightful personality and was one of the most attractive women I have ever seen. After a quick photo, I whisked my husband away from her !!!

At an Indian hotel, You don't walk up to a desk to check in. Oh no, you are escorted to a nice seating area to fill in the registration form. (In one hotel, we even filled in registration form in our room). And, of course, someone escorts you to your room. This was true even in the fairly modest hotel we stayed in at Varanasi, so it's not just limited to the outrageously gorgeous hotels that have been the norm.

A buffet is not self-serve in India, at least not in the hotels we are staying in. After your plate is loaded, someone will rush to your side to carry it to the table. Items are also passed while you are sitting.

When you say thank you for these services, or for the driver always opening the door for you, the response is "It is my duty". Our van is stocked with cold drinks and snacks; when passing drinks to us, they are always presented on a small silver tray, as with other things in the hotels.

I have high hopes that my husband is taking careful notes about this assiduous service. Of course, he is probably hoping I am the one taking notes!

An Apple Experience

Recently I wrote about great customer experiences at ING Direct, especially at their new cafe in Toronto.  Amazingly, I've just had another customer experience worth writing about - at the Apple store in downtown Toronto.

Apple store - Toronto Eaton Centre

Past experiences at the Apple store revolved around the Genius Bar  - getting expert help with my iPod at the promised appointment time.  This time, I was in a hurry to buy a blue wireless Jambox speaker.  There was one left on the shelf, in black, and the store was thronged with customers and buzzing with activity.  As far as I could see, the many Apple staff in blue t-shirts were all occupied with customers.  I was never going to get out of there in time for my next appointment!

Then, one of the staff instructed me to go to one of the iPads lined up on the long tables, and click in the bottom right to call for a salesperson.  The screen instructed me to stand there and someone would come to me.  After a minute or so, I clicked again and was told there were 2 people ahead of me and did I still want to wait?  I clicked on yes, and a salesperson promptly showed up.  I told her what I wanted and she walked me to the back of the store, where she sent someone off to the back room to fetch the blue Jambox, the last one in stock as it happened, and put it in a bag for me.  She had a mobile device in her hand (an iTouch?), with a card reader.  So she captured my credit card info and asked me to sign on the touch screen, then walked me to the door, and grabbing my receipt off a printer mounted under a table near the door.  Presto, I was finished in time for my next (ugh dentist) appointment.

What a fabulous experience.  Quick, efficient, and showing off Apple technology all the way.

ING Direct Cafe: A Breath of Fresh Air

How often do you sit around with friends, lamenting ignorant, disinterested service reps, punitive service conditions, stranglehold contracts, confusing interfaces, or misleading entry prices with surprise surcharges?  If you're like me, it makes you appreciate those companies that deal with you competently, fairly and transparently.  I can get excited about companies as diverse as the company that so smoothly rents out our cottage or the arborists who took down our diseased tree so proficiently.

But one company consistently blows me away and that's ING Direct Bank*.  Their products are simple and work as advertised.  The web site is intuitive and easy to navigate.  Their communications are clear and understandable.  Their client reps know their stuff and are unfailingly pleasant.  (In fact, at the 2011 Contact Center World North American Finals in May, they won best mid-sized contact centre in North America).  As an innovation specialist, I respect their passion to change the way banking is done: without traditional branches, they deliver superb products over the Internet and the phone.

ING Direct has now found a new way to surprise and delight me as a customer - the new ING Direct cafe in downtown Toronto.  They've transformed a heritage building at 221 Yonge with heritage brick walls, and lots of natural wood and light, and there's only one word for the result: gorgeous.  It's a place where ING Direct wants to interact their customers in a new way, to be a vibrant part of the Toronto community, and to manifest their commitment to sustainability.

Main floor of the ING Direct Toronto Cafe

 As you can see, the main floor of the ING Direct Cafe really has a cafe, where you can make your own coffee from fair trade coffee from Haiti in a fancy machine, or, if like me you don't drink coffee, you can juice your own oranges in an equally fancy juicer or make some tea.  The coffee and juice, and organic pastries, are not free, and neither are the other 'orange' ING items; all the profits are donated to charity.  There's free WiFi (of course), and a bank of lovely iPads to try out ING's industry-leading mobile apps.  The ING staff are there to answer your questions, not to pitch ING products.  Or you can just gravitate to the comfortable seating to just hang out in this space and read some magazines, as I saw folks doing the day I was there.

On the main floor ING features companies whose principles coincide with ING's, dubbed Saver's Friends.  There was bike from Curbside Cycle on display the day I was there.  The $650 bike was being sold for $400 - again with all the money being used to build cycling education and mechanics facilities in St. Jamestown as well as purchsing bicycle helmets and locks for kids.  The bright orange bike embodied many messages - saving your money, saving the environment, community partnerships, and of course the link with the Netherlands famous for biking (ING's parent is Dutch and the bike was the Batavus brand from the Netherlands).

ING Direct Cafe's Green Wall

As you walk up to the second story, you pass by the gorgeous Green Wall as you enter the co-working space.  (See this article in Globe and Mail for an interesting perspective on the growing trend toward co-working). A modest working area, access to great meeting rooms and top-of-the-line technology - great big LED screens, facilities for webcasting, digital whiteboards - everything an independent entrepreneur would dream of, all available for a modest fee (also donated to charity).  The informal 40-person meeting room can be booked free by nonprofit or community groups and is already becoming a favourite venue for many.

The third floor is a satellite office for ING Direct staff - a place of experimentation and innovation.  It's a coveted place for ING employees to work.  Once you've experienced this fresh and friendly space, it might just become a coveted space for you too.

* full disclosure:  I am on the board of ING Direct Bank.  However I was a delighted customer long before I was a director, and this post is written form the point of view of a customer.