If you stop and think about it,
every business is a service business. Businesses exist to sell, to sell they must have customers, and there is no better way to earn those customers than providing mind-blowing service. I had a great service experience not long ago, and I'm happy to say it was at a chain that proudly pays its employees a living wage and provides decent benefits.
Short back story, I have a friend who is partially disabled after several cancer-related surgeries. Her friends take turns making sure she has rides to doctor appointments, a clean house, and healthy food, until she can live independently again. It was the latter that took us to a nearby Costco on William Cannon Drive in Austin, Texas, some weeks back, where we encountered a pleasant surprise and a lesson for corporate America.
Join us below, and let's talk about who and what really matters to us ordinary consumers. Hint, it isn't the CEO ...
My friend has relearned to walk, a little bit. But it'll be some time before endurance returns. Costco is a huge store, way too big for her to walk around in for long. Fortunately, like many retailers, Costco has electric carts. The problem was, when she went limping up to the doorway, all the carts were in use. I admit being a little curt to the door guy.
"This is bullshit, you guys are a multibillion dollar company, you need to have enough carts for people!"
But the door guy didn't get pouty or confrontational. He apologized sincerely, agreed with me, and then told me a cart had just gone out to the parking lot, and if we could give him a second he'd hunt it down and bring it back just for us. That's exactly what he did. But it didn't stop there. He warned us the carts were electric, and that that one he brought back might be a little low on juice. He advised us to go ahead and start shopping, he'd find another one soon enough and track us down inside to exchange.
Sure enough, about halfway through our shopping trip the cart begin to struggle. And here comes the door guy with a new cart as if on cue. He turned it over to us, introduced himself as Alex, gave me his work schedule, and told us if we ever come in while he's on duty, he'll make certain we're taken care of.
I can't tell you how much this impressed me. This one single guy, acting on his own initiative, not only cemented me as a Costco customer for life, I now prefer to go to that specific store whenever possible, even though it's about as far away as it can be from where I live and still be in the same city. And now it's on the front page of Daily Kos, which means that one single guy has brought more goodwill to Costco than a million bucks worth of YouTube ads ever could.
Front-line service matters. It matters a lot. It always has and it always will. And yet it's amazing how many companies and the people who run them just don't seem to get that. They try to outsource their service, or buy it on the cheap, they don't give their staff the tools or wages they need. But when it comes to senior executives, the sky's the limit! Not just zillions but perks galore, Cadillac healthcare plans, company cars, and corporate jets. Whether you're a customer, an employee, or a stockholder, sooner rather than later that's money right out of your pocket:
“Excessive and poorly structured CEO pay packages don’t just take money from shareholders and pose a risk for the destruction of shareholder value, they also prevent corporations from paying decent wages to their employees,” said Rosanna Landis Weaver, report author and manager of As You Sow's Executive Compensation Program. “Most CEOs have come to be grossly overpaid, and that overpayment is harmful to the companies, the shareholders, the customers, the other employees, the economy, and society as a whole.”
Here's the important thing: As retail customers, we don't deal with CEOs or CFOs, or senior managers, or department heads for that matter. As customers, we don't know who those senior execs are and we could care less. We deal with the products that company makes and the front-line employees who support them. They're the employees who really count.
If you want your company to prosper, plowing another million or three into another millionaire's offshore account is of questionable value. If you want return on investment, put your resources into the front line, where it's visible, where it matters to the customers who pay your salaries. That's just good business, and the bottom line is more happy customers means more money for everyone.
Costco does invest in their front-line employees, and surprise, surprise, it shows! It sure showed a few weeks ago in south Austin. We've been back to that store twice since then, and both times our new friend working the door was there waiting with a charged cart, greeting us by name. That's the kind of employee who is going to make you a ton of money, that's the kind of employee you want. Alas, there's plenty of Fortune 500 companies in the U.S. that don't seem to get that, or don't give a shit if they do, every one of which could probably use a lot less high-level bloat. They'd get by just fine. But they could sure use a lot more people like Alex.