Think Customers: The 1to1 Blog

As I sipped, I happened to pull the book out of its bag and realized that somehow I had grabbed Chocolate Factory rather than Glass Elevator. Yikes - disaster narrowly averted!

Relieved that I hadn't made it all the way back home with the wrong book, I headed back to the kid's section to see if they might let me just switch the two. Nope. Computerized inventory control made that impossible, so it was back to the checkout line for me.

It was a slow day, the line moved quickly, and not 15 minutes after my first purchase I found myself back in front of the exact same clerk. I explained my mistake, showed her the two books and requested an exchange.

"A supervisor will need to do that," she said, and without meeting my eye, she shoved my books to an unoccupied register where another five minutes went by until a supervisor appeared. Okay, maybe it was just two minutes, but we were not talking about the return of a dog eared paperback purchased 3 months ago, or an Amazon hardback disguised in a bricks and mortar bag. This was an even exchange of a book sold 15 minutes prior by the same clerk?! For whatever reason, it appeared that their process dictated that any exchange, no matter how simple, be escalated to a supervisor. So much for first-contact resolution.

Now, were I more like my colleague Toni Hendrix, I would taken the supervisor aside right then and there. Instead, I took my disbelief to the Internet, like so many customers do each day....

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Catrina Logan Boisson is Vice President, Marketing, for the New Jersey Performing Arts Center and a member of the 1to1 Magazine Editorial Advisory Board.