Brian Wetjen

It’s been a very frustrating day.

Well, make that few days. And it’s been frustrating for stupid reasons. A lot of little, simple, stupid reasons.

And the one thing that could have made it all a lot less frustrating is if I’d received some good customer service.

I seriously don’t think it’s too much to ask. There’s a baseline level of service that a consumer should be able to receive in a given transaction. I know I may sometimes have higher expectations from people and society in general than I should, but come on – isn’t that how it’s supposed to be? Always try to do a little better than before so that you advance humanity rather than degrade it.

Well, today’s events are what set me off. I’ll elaborate on my experience with having new garage door openers installed in another post. But for now, this is the official First Post of my entries on Customer Service. A little background first.

In the summer of 1989, when I was 15, I saw a looming date in the fall. That date was my birthday, when I would turn 16. I knew two things. One: I wanted a car. Two: there was no way in hell I was going to drive around one of my parents’ huge bubble-butt station wagons. Yeah – we had TWO giant station wagons. And I really didn’t like the way they looked.

One of them looked lot like this 1975 Olds Cutlass Supreme Station Wagon. The other was newer, and was enhanced by a nice faux woodgrain on the side. Now, no offense Mom & Dad, as I know you guys didn’t have much money and you did have three boys and a big dog, but those wagons were ugly. I don’t blame you. I’m just stating facts.

Anyway, the only way out of the situation was to get a job. A job gets you money and money gets you a car.

So I applied at Baker’s on 90th and Fort. Our family shopped there frequently, and they actually did hire 15-year-olds. Now, this wasn’t just some minimum-wage job in 1989. I had to go through two interviews at Baker’s corporate office just to get hired. Then, employment was contingent upon passing all the training. And it wasn’t just watching a video and pretending that you knew that eggs go on top of a sack. There were tests, honesty assessments, sacker training, culture training… a lot of stuff. But what you knew for sure when you got done with it was that these people were serious about their business, they demanded that people who worked for them were serious about it as well, and that you were going to be a part of it all. And that was important.

In those days, Baker’s had a tagline of, “Quality, Variety, Service.” Customer service was one of the TOP things that was a true differentiator in the grocery business at that time. I was hired as a sacker. My entire job was to greet customers, sack their groceries with Tetris-like precision, and to carry their groceries out to their car and thank them for their business. The carry-out was not some half-assed whisper of, “Would you like help out with this?” It was The Law. You were not to ASK if someone wanted a carry out. They got it. One sack? Carry out. That’s it.

At the time, I definitely didn’t realize what I was learning. But these lessons continued in virtually everything we did at Baker’s. Appearance mattered. Performance mattered. Perception mattered. But it wasn’t about money. It wasn’t about the bottom line. It wasn’t about efficiency or cost. It was always about the customer. If the customer was happy, that was all that mattered.

So many details about the way we did everything was absolutely rooted in customer satisfaction. We cleaned that store every single night. We kept the shelves stocked, but made sure we didn’t get in the way when we did it. We walked people to items they were looking for so we could help make sure that they found exactly what they were looking for. It was a lot more than simply, “the customer was always right.” The common saying was that, “the customer signs our paycheck.” That puts it into perspective.

I worked for Baker’s for nearly ten years. All through high school. All through college. It wasn’t until I got my first job out of college at a web company that I quit working there. During that run, I learned more than I think most people are able to learn in three times that many years. I sacked, checked, built displays, cleaned, carried out, stocked, fixed, prebooked orders, managed employees, managed schedules, created signage and artwork, trained employees, opened the store, closed the store, hired, fired, wrote store newsletters, ran the store, ran the back room, managed vendors, and nearly everything in between. I left Baker’s with a great respect and appreciation for what it takes to work with people and treat customers right. I am truly thankful for that.

Which is why todays’ events have had such an impact on me.

Customer service is something I notice all the time. Good or bad. It’s easy to call out people for bad customer service. But it’s not as often that people who do things well get any credit for it.  I want to do a tiny little part in the effort to highlight both. So I’m going to create a new blog category for customer service and post my musings on various experiences.

There’s a direct relationship to customer service and other things I’m passionate about. I’m sure it’s intertwined, too. But my day-to-day job now is highly focused on customer service in a different medium: websites. When it gets down to it, though, what we in the biz call “user experience design” is actually just customer service when you get down to it. When someone enters your store (site) what kind of experience do you want them to have? A good one. Even better – a great one.

So watch for some posts about customer service from time to time. Well, I can actually see it being frequently. Because it’s something I pay attention to. And it’s one of those things that I truly feel makes a BIG difference.

Treat people well, make sure you do the best job you can, and be honest. Those are the basics for doing business. Do it well, and I believe you’ll achieve success. Do it poorly, and… well… good luck. You’ll need it.