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June 05, 2006
The Competition
The Ferrett has a nice post today about why Borders sucks. He doesn’t frame it this way, or even think about it this way, but he sure does talk about it...
The rest of us sighed with relief…. Because Sophie sucked.
It’s not that Sophie was deluded; she was great with customers. She’d go off and talk to them for minutes on end, holding up the line, disappearing to have some happy, dithering conversation when the counter was busy and we needed help. She had been assigned to take care of the art section, but her shelves were always a friggin’ disaster because Sophie would spend her time yapping to anyone who came within earshot, forgetting to shelve or straighten books.
Unfortunately, the things Sophie was good at were not the things you needed to be a good book store clerk, let alone management.
No. Sophie did not suck. Borders sucks. Imagine you’re a customer (most of you are). You walk into a bookstore and everyone on the floor ignores you because they’re straitening shelves. No problem, you think. I’ll just go to the customer service desk. Which is empty. And no one comes by. And then they point you to a computer to look it up yourself...
This happens to me time and again at Borders. It’s why I work for Barnes and noble. Every employee and store within the Barnes and Noble family is judged on 4 things:
1) Putting the book in the customer’s hand
2) Offering to ship to home (or call another store if the customer wishes) if we can’t find the book
3) Fast Cashiering (1 register open for each 4 people in line.)
4) Offering the membership.
I’ll grant that the last one is way more important for the company than the shopper...
This means that every single person at a Barnes and Noble is dedicated to helping customers find books. Think of something which you-- as a shopper-- want when you come into a bookstore. Is it on the list, or covered by something on the list? If it isn’t, let us know; we’d like to fix that...
Customers want to browse the store, find any books they’re looking for, get recommendations, and—when it’s time to go—have the “giving up their money” part of the process be as painless as possible. Everything else we do (receiving the books, shelving the books, straitening the books) is to support our customer’s expectations. When the support functions become primary aims—as they have in the case of Border’s books—customer satisfaction plummets. Sophie can play for my team any day of the week. The Ferrett would be fired or eased out within three months. And that’s why Barnes and Noble is the world’s largest bookstore...
Oh, and for the record, I’ll go this far:
In support of part 4...
Posted by Andrew at June 5, 2006 12:17 PM