WRITER - Vancouver Lifestyles -
America, the Retail King
Woodwards and Eatons, for so many years both cornerstones of our daily living Canadian culture, are long gone. The Hudson’s Bay Company, home of the Hudson’s Bay blanket, and historical museums on the sixth floor next to “The Paddlewheel” cafeterias, is not long for this world. How sad to lose these wonderful warm places!
For Vancouverites, Woodwards and its famous $1.49 day were as much a part of the landscape as sea and sky. My uncle was the head tailor at The Bay for 25 years, a real Gold Watch guy. Many years ago, I wrote and performed a one-man play about an Eaton’s appliance salesman. My research included reading everything I could get my hands on about Timothy Eaton, and much of that history ended up on stage. Don’t for a moment underestimate the role this kind of institution plays in our everyday lives.
Meanwhile, in the United States, two traditional department stores - Macy’s and Nordstrom’s - are still crowded with busy shoppers. Nordstrom’s, in particular continues to be touted worldwide and studied in business schools for its devotion to customer service. Now, why is that? Well, to quote a certain James Bond tune, because “Nobody does it better, nobody does it half as good as you.” When it comes to presentation, personal service, range of products, and unique experience, Baby, you’re the best!
Stay a couple of nights in the venerable old Westin St. Francis Hotel on Union Square in San Francisco. (Hey, it’s cheap! United Airlines return, Supershuttle, SFO to hotel and back, and 2 nights on the Heavenly Bed, all for $643CAN, booked by mouse-click on www.expedia.ca. Does it get easier than this?) First thing you’ll notice on the desk in your room is that bright orange Macy’s discount card. Twelve per cent off everything in the store, and that includes sales items! 12%!!! Sales items, too !!! Let me outta here!
Of course, if you are a Canadian, if you are accustomed to indifference and downright belligerence, if years of self-involved, service-challenged Canucklehead clerks have conditioned you to expect the very worst, you stride into Macy’s in full defensive mode. You are fully expecting an argument, an excuse, a disdainful explanation that your pathetic discount offer has long since expired. Ha!
Imagine your astonishment, your momentary confusion, your crazy-mad delight when the Macy’s clerk mystically combines this offer with that deal with that special with that discount and you float out of the store fifteen minutes later with a beautiful sweater AT FORTY PER CENT OFF!
How many times have you asked a cashier at one of our local megastores if such-and-such a product is available, only to be told – without a look in the eye, without any effort to come out from behind the security of the counter to help – “only what’s there?”
Contrast the moment you stroll into Nordstrom’s in Seattle. Immediately a smiling new friend is engaging you. A comment about the weather, an observation on your own clothes and style, a suggestion about something new, a question. It may be learned technique; but it works, sweetheart, it works.
In Canada, the new reality in the service industries, which only makes up about 70% of our gross economy, is that the staff is King, not the customer. In Starbucks, the Barista rules. What you want for your coffee break is not really important. Who cares about you, the customer? What’s really significant is what club the Barista went to last night or why his or her girlfriend or boyfriend moved to Kelowna without so much as a goodbye. The real issue is which tunes we’re playing.
Are you old enough to remember when libraries were quiet places? So were bookstores. I have seen and heard four clerks at a time hollering their personal histories across the aisles at Chapters over the blare of the latest hip-hop noise. You take your life in your hands if you ask for a little peace while you consider buying one of their books. Somehow the notion that your potential purchase is linked to their employment is a modern disconnect. Are they Heather’s Picks? Does Heather even know how badly she is being represented? Does Heather care?
The Olympics are getting closer. Millions of dollars are invested. Expectations are way past huge. Ilanaaq, the Inuit symbol chosen for 2010, means, “friend, greeting, welcome.” That’s wonderful; but what will those thousands of enthusiastic visitors really think of us?
They’ll love the scenery, the vistas. They’ll find great food and make some wonderful friends. But they’ll also slog their way through downtown streets that have been abandoned to drug addicts and beggars. And, if they make it through those gauntlets of desperation, they will find stores with not half the choice of product available in any small town in California. They will find shop clerks who have invested little or no time in product knowledge, arrogant bubbleheads who are unconversant with their own means of livelihood.
Preparatory to these Olympics, preparatory to going to work in the morning, every retailer and service person in this Province should be compelled to read Scott McKain’s wonderful new book, “All Business Is Show Business.” (Paperback, Nelson Business, publishers) In fact, the Campbell Twins, Premier Gordon and Mayor Larry, should demand that everyone in tourism, service and retail in British Columbia read this book. It’s all about amazing and thrilling your customers and making them loyal for life. It’s about providing unforgettable shopping and dining experiences and making emotional connections that resonate long after the party is over.
If you think all of the competition in 2010 is happening on the ski slopes and the skating ovals, you’ve missed the Big Picture.
Let’s act while we still have time.
