The Customer Service Survey
VocaLabs' weblog providing news and commentary on the challenges of providing good customer service.
Can you please sell me what I need to buy?
Tuesday - February 06, 2007 03:59 PM in
My oldest son lost his boots and gloves at school late last week. This isn't such a surprising thing, given that he's in second grade. You sort of expect to go through a certain amount of lost clothing at this age.
So I went to Target to buy new boots and gloves only to find aisle after aisle of....
Sandals.
Bathing suits.
T-shirts.
Shorts.
Raincoats and rubber boots.
Sandbox toys.
Understand that the temperature at my home yesterday morning when I woke up was -20F, and today we awoke to subzero temperatures and a fresh coat of snow. Sandals are about as useful right now as roller skates on a fish. I asked an employee, who shook her head sadly and told me that all the winter stuff had been moved out on clearance weeks ago.
Target has a reputation for moving seasonal merchandise in and out early: they have a giant computer somewhere (probably Miami, San Diego, or some other warm place) which decides when to stock next season's stuff in order to squeeze every last penny of profit. So I figured I'd go next door to the shoe store, which (I figured) would be likely to have seasonal footwear actually in season instead of six months ahead of when we could possibly use it.
In the shoe store, I found....
Sandals.
Flip-flops.
Boating shoes.
And exactly one pair of boots in my son's size. The salesperson helpfully looked up in the inventory computer and informed me that if I didn't like that style, I could drive ten miles to a different store where they had a second pair of boots in the same size, different style.
I declined, and bought the bird in the hand.
But who would have thought that in the middle of the worst cold snap in several years, it would be so hard to buy a pair of winter boots in Minneapolis?
On the other hand, come August, I'm sure I'll have no trouble finding jackets, mittens, boots, hats, sleds, snowshoes....
Posted by Peter Leppik
Sandals.
Bathing suits.
T-shirts.
Shorts.
Raincoats and rubber boots.
Sandbox toys.
Understand that the temperature at my home yesterday morning when I woke up was -20F, and today we awoke to subzero temperatures and a fresh coat of snow. Sandals are about as useful right now as roller skates on a fish. I asked an employee, who shook her head sadly and told me that all the winter stuff had been moved out on clearance weeks ago.
Target has a reputation for moving seasonal merchandise in and out early: they have a giant computer somewhere (probably Miami, San Diego, or some other warm place) which decides when to stock next season's stuff in order to squeeze every last penny of profit. So I figured I'd go next door to the shoe store, which (I figured) would be likely to have seasonal footwear actually in season instead of six months ahead of when we could possibly use it.
In the shoe store, I found....
Sandals.
Flip-flops.
Boating shoes.
And exactly one pair of boots in my son's size. The salesperson helpfully looked up in the inventory computer and informed me that if I didn't like that style, I could drive ten miles to a different store where they had a second pair of boots in the same size, different style.
I declined, and bought the bird in the hand.
But who would have thought that in the middle of the worst cold snap in several years, it would be so hard to buy a pair of winter boots in Minneapolis?
On the other hand, come August, I'm sure I'll have no trouble finding jackets, mittens, boots, hats, sleds, snowshoes....
Posted by Peter Leppik
Posted at 03:59 PM by | | | |