Page 120 - The Apple Experience

are not receiving a warm welcome. If you leave a message or send an e-mail
to someone at that company, and nobody calls you back or responds to your

e-mail, you are not receiving a warm welcome. It’s time to take your business

somewhere else.

On Black Friday, 2011, I conducted an informal experiment at my local

shopping mall. It was completely unscientific but very instructive. As you

know, Black Friday is when merchants offer steep discounts to get people

through the door to kick off the all-important holiday buying season. The
crowds are enormous, and some people, like myself, purposely avoid

venturing anywhere near a mall on that day. But when my family expressed

an interest in going, I reluctantly decided to take the opportunity to conduct

my little experiment despite the stressful crowds. Oh, what I’ll do in the

name of research!

When we arrived at the mall, I had three stores on my list to visit: Apple,

AT&T, and LEGO. Each of these three retailers trains employees and sales
staff to approach customers with a warm welcome. I wanted to see how well

the employees of these brands follow their company’s guidance on the busiest

shopping day of the year. If employees greeted me upon entering the store in

the middle of Black Friday madness, then I would know they had completely

internalized the company’s core customer service philosophy. Although the

concept of greeting is intended for the customer service experience for these

brands, it is widely known that greeting serves a double function, the second

being shrinkage control, or the monitoring of theft. Retailers have noticed

that greeting customers with a verbal welcome and making eye contact makes
good business sense and deters people from leaving with goods that don’t

belong to them!

I first stopped at an AT&T retail store. We will discuss AT&T in more

detail later in the chapter, but step one of its service philosophies is to make