I'll take that customer service to go, please!

2012-09-18

This past week, I had the opportunity to go to The Mall of America in Minnesota. For those of you who have been to this particular mall before, you know there is a plethora of everything and anything. If you want it, they have it, probably in at least five locations. So, it comes as no surprise that customer service is a driving factor in getting your consumers to come back.

As we made our way to the checkout line, we realized the line was unbelievably long—at least 50 people. I stared in shock as my DECA expectations were now being challenged. What business would ever let its line get this out of control? During my more than 30-minute wait, I watched at least ten customers leave their merchandise and murmur to a friend that they would grab it at a different store. We all know this type of customer experience will eventually result in poor future sales for this business.

Sure, the store had customers who were still waiting in line, but they were unhappy and nothing was being done to apologize for the inconvenience. A small free item or 10% of our purchase would have been a nice gesture. This could have turned a bad situation into an excellent experience for customers. In addition, the sales they were losing that day were only the beginning of this business’s worries. You can count on customers now telling others about their poor experiences in that store. The amount of customers they could lose over time will be much greater than the immediate detriment we had witnessed.

In DECA, we do not only learn about products or the basic business and marketing vocabulary, we also learn how to understand people and what makes them tick. In competitive role-plays, we learn to develop solutions that might prevent problematic situations such as the one I experienced. This is why DECA matters; it teaches us how to think on our feet, be creative in how we solve problems and look at a situation while keeping in mind long term effects. As you set out on your DECA endeavors this year, I challenge you to find the solution others never sought.