Here to help, IKEA?

Another customer service story. Another poor customer service story.

Now, usually I’m fairly impressed with IKEA. They’ve understood a lot about the customer journey, about a good experience, and they’ve improved their service offer over the years. So I’m doubly upset to see them fail. And it’s the same old failure we so often see – – the simply not “getting it”. Nothing fancy here – no fancy system or process or anything needed. They just need to ‘get it’.
Well, the story itself is this: So I find at checkout that the box of glasses I’ve picked up has a broken glass in it. The helpful chap at checkout says “Just go up the stairs (which is going in again). Tell the guard what you’re doing and they’ll let you in. Just go and fetch a new box without a broken one”. Well, even this could have been better, of course; like someone could have gone for me (I’m the customer, I’ve already queued and paid and don’t need more work!).

That’s when I meet Paddy (name changed) on my way back in with the box of broken glasses (now with a bit of my blood on from a cut finger). He’s the staffer I meet and tell what’s happened and what I’m doing. But he wont have it. What he wants me to do is take this back to Returns (another long queue – and don’t forget I already queued and discovered this fault at the checkout – ie before taking the goods away), get the refund, then go in thru the store again, find a replacement box of glasses without any breakages, queue up again and pay again. and he just wont budge. And he’s got this little name badge saying “Paddy, here to help”. They all have them and they all say “here to help” on. It looks like all the staff are wearing them. And you know what he’s telling me is “we don’t do that, we can’t do that, we have a procedure”. Paddy has a friend with him and even she doesn’t have the gumption to just say “Let me just take that for you” and go get me a replacement.

Now that’s when I give Paddy his little hint. “How would you like me to treat you in my shop if you were my customer and I’d just sold you damaged merchandise? and you asked me for help right there and then, before I’d actually left the cash desk, left the shop?” Sadly he starts staring right over my shoulder into the distance and that, besides me getting angry (I must confess) was that.

So I took it back to Returns and took my money home. So we’re all losers. I don’t have the glasses; IKEA doesn’t have my money and neither Paddy nor I much enjoyed that at all.
I told the girl at Returns all about it and she said lots of people would have let me back in. But note that she doesn’t do anything to help me either. I have to ask for my receipt back because it has some of my blood on it, I say, but she doesn’t get it even then and laughs.
“here to help” is a million miles away from “we have a procedure”. They are completely different philosophies. “here to help” is an idea about achieving the customer’s desire – it can include procedures but it needs to transcend them in order to be true to itself. I think that is the genuine IKEA mind. Paddy was stuck at a lower level idea which is “we have a procedure”, missing the point that … and this is really all there is to customer service:
1. The whole point of all the effort the retailer has gone to is to have a positive and mutually beneficial relationship with the customer
2. The customer has the money and, yep, the customer has a choice

Now, Paddy, waddayagonna do?

PS: of course there’s also a good point here about why the cashier and everyone else had a different idea about what should happen. No, nobody offered me a plaster for my finger either. So I’m tagging this with “staff engagement and involvement” as well as “customer service”,  just to give you a whole other facet to consider.