Customer Service is essential
Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster is a fascinating albeit slightly depressing read for anyone who has in the past loved luxury or service. Shopping in boutiques has always been something I’ve loved to do because I would get the best and most knowledgeable service. The sales people would learn my name, they’d put things aside when they came in, they could tell me the little details, they’d wrap up my packages and make shopping an experience whether I was buying something for $20 or $200.
Living in Santa Monica with neighbors like Los Angeles and Malibu, “luxury” boutiques are all around. Every name designer and brand is within easy reach of me yet service and knowledge within those companies is pretty elusive. Even more so during the recession, which you think would be opposite.
During tough times, when foot traffic has slowed and dropping cash is slower still, you’d think companies would regroup, get rid of unproductive, knowledgeable people and train those that stay on how to treat and engage customers, how to explain the products from a t-shirt to a ring to a Bentley and then train them on how to present it upon check out.
But I can’t tell you how many luxury stores I’ve been to where the sales people just kind of do their own thing from gossiping with each other, to letting merchandise just unfolded on shelves to saying, “Um, I don’t know” when asked a question. In a store shelling out luxury products and I as their only customer in sight, it’s frustrating. I’m actually a European shopper in the sense I generally like to be left alone to browse but when I have a question, someone better have an answer. And if I’m going to spend money I don’t take into consideration just the price of the item but the entire experience. If the sales person makes it less than, I walk.
Yesterday a girlfriend and I went to the new J.Crew Collection store in Malibu, one of three in the country. We were the only customers with 5 sales girls running around. To their credit, the nicest woman came over and was genuinely interested in helping us and talking to us and we were genuinely happy to be petting the pretty things – specifically the luggage.
With a trip coming up to Europe, my girlfriend wanted to buy it. She hesitated at the price and asked my opinion since I’m a frequent traveller. I tried asking the sales lady a lot of questions but the first problem was it took 4 sales women to figure out how to open the special lock system. And then they each just gave a quick blurb about how it was hand made for the Royal Family and limited edition. I asked a few more questions but didn’t get answers to those. It was, however, a stunning piece of luggage and I had read up online about it a little so I knew the quality was high and could totally see my girlfriend with it.
But with such a big purchase, she wanted to make sure she knew what she was getting. And you’d expect from a store – especially a high-end retailer – to be able to get your every bit of information and present it in a totally confident way. But when she asked the price it took four women and about ten minutes to try to figure out the price of the bag. When she asked to see the inside, it took about another 10 minutes to figure out how to open it. When she wanted to know all the materials used, it took scrambling around to find out what the material was (we were told the shell was made out of leather even though it clearly wasn’t). Totally in-love with the product, my friend hesitated in buying it because the whole experience in the store seemed uncertain. The staff wasn’t making it easy for her to say yes to buying. Their confusion made her confused about buying.
Elsewhere