Daily Movement

My assertion is that poor customer service (bad cash register skills, lack of help on sales floor, arguing with customer during sales process) is better than customer unfriendly service (imposition of lose-lose rules “with a smile”, forcing fliers to throw away their nail clippers rather than mail them back to themselves, cancelling flights that are not full enough to pack the next flight, etc.)

As a concrete example, Border’s Books in Union City (maybe elsewhere too since the workers in the trenches don’t dream up these things unless they are looking at bottom line numbers — typically done by managers) has developed a particularly unfriendly policy of:

• not letting customers browse magazines in the eating area even if they have purchased drinks and food.
• not letting customers sit at certain tables and ‘study’ even if they have purchased drinks and food. The idea of study is inconsistently defined to using a computer. To my confirmation, reading a book is ok. It might even be a book that has some educational use. And the rule isn’t as much enforced as it is bullied into compliance. The hard-skinned can ignore the employee requests and the softer skinned, more sympathetic customers will reluctantly obey.

“So what,” you say. The lack of an empty table discourages newcomers from wanting to buy drinks and sit down, and consequently reduces revenue. But is it better overall to let new customers be visually discouraged from buying food and drink, or to verbally discourage existing customers from ever patronizing the business again. These disgruntled customers then make a point of buying books from barnes and noble (where I haven’t personally experienced any verbal confrontation at any of the many stores I have been to), amazon or a local store, and write scathing commentaries online.

So the net effect before and after Border’s Cafe rules:

before:

1. buy food and drink ( + profit )
2. read and work
3. maybe buy book (+ profit)
4. go to step 1 over period of weeks/months.

After:

1. buy food and drink ( + profit )
2. read and work
3. maybe buy book (+ profit)
4. get offended at verbal confrontation (0 profit short term, but - profit long term )
5. go elsewhere ( - profit)
6. don’t bring friends (- profit)
7. write weblog commentary ( - profit through influence)

The history of Border’s increasing customer offensiveness is roughly as follows:

• 1998 - All is well with Border’s cafe
• 1999 - Barnes and Noble superstore with a cafe opens up 1/4 mile away and draws away a lot of Border’s customers revenue.
• 1999-2000 Tipping is no longer allowed at Border’s Cafe. This one is a surprise, isn’t it?
• 1999-2000 - San Mateo Border’s Cafe starts to verbally discourage use of computers by telling customers to not plug their computers into the wall. Yes, corporate policy thinks an extra 12 cents of electricity is worth verbal confrontation with customers.
• 2002-2003 - Union City Border’s Cafe verbally discourages browsing of unpurchased magazines in the cafe.
• 2003-2004 - Union City Border’s Cafe verbally discourages “studying” at tables

As far as I know, there is no competing bookstore near the Union City Border’s Books. Before 1999, my impression of Barnes and Noble wasn’t so great. I liked Border’s selection better. Barnes and Noble seemed to have too many penguin classics and science fiction and not enough current literature. In 1999, they caught up and I think effectively overtook Border’s in the sense of selection, presence and experience.

As a footnote, cafes all over have had to learn to deal with the worst customer: the student. There are many ways of various effectiveness and palatability:

• limiting table time during busy periods and doing so in a fairly consistent and insistent way
• requiring you to buy some amount of food or drink to remain seated
• explicitly banning studying (a most reprehensible rule as explained above)
• limiting table sizes or number of tables to discourage sitting at tables and rather get food to-go
• making environment unattractive to sit in (think fluorescent lighting and linoleum tile that feels like someones kitchen)
• serving all drinks in to-go cups to encourage you “to go”.

The What’s worse? - indifference to customers or antagonism of customers by Daily Movement, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

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This entry was posted on Monday, February 23rd, 2004 at 3:00 am and is filed under Bay Area Bitching. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.