JUST GIVE ME THE SHOES! - A tale of business process failure
For Christmas a very kind mentor and friend bought me a gift voucher for TOMS shoes.
TOMS is a pretty cool company that provide one pair of shoes to people in developing countries for every one pair of shoes sold to people in developed countries.
On the weekend I headed out to my local TOMS shop to find a pair of shoes. Given I have oddly shaped feet (long, narrow and flat) and have never bought TOMS shoes before, I knew I wanted to try them on before I spent my money on them.
And I found a pair that I fell in love with: gold satin with rope wrapping around the bottom. So comfortable, so cool, so socially conscious.
I went up with the lovely sales person who had been helping me out to pay for them.
I whipped out my phone, pulled up the gift certificate, handed it over… And it didn’t work.
The sales person asked if I would mind waiting 5 minutes until their manager got back from their break. She kindly made me a free hot chocolate, and I sat down to wait for her manager to come back.
The manager arrived and tried himself. He called through to head office - they didn’t answer. He tried entering the gift card details again.
Eventually they decided that their gift cards don’t work in their brick and mortar stores, they can only be used on the online store. Together we went to the online store, only to find that on the online store the shoes that I wanted were sold out in my size.
I ended up in the bizarre situation that the gift card I had was valid, and the shoes that I wanted were right in front of me, but I could not buy them.
The store sales people were kind and very apologetic. They took my number, promised to fix it, and set the shoes aside.
The next day I get a call from a customer service representative at TOMS head office.
How about they cancel the gift card, refund the money to my mentor, I ask the mentor for cash instead, and then go into the shop to buy the shoes? Um. No.
The solution?
I order the shoes in a different size online and pay with the gift card, the customer service rep changes the order for it to be in my size, they send the shoes from the store to the sales warehouse, and then send the shoes to me like any other order.
I do think that companies should aim to have a positive impact on the world. That is why I started MimicTec (where we improve farm profitability by improving animal welfare). And that is why I was so thrilled and touched that my mentor gave me the gift card for TOMS shoes in the first place.
But before you can have a positive impact on the world, you need to be a company that works. Which is why business processes are so important.
I would be very happy to buy another set of TOMS shoes into the future because of how caring, supportive and apologetic the TOMS staff were, and because I still believe deeply in their business' goals.
But if you've ever wondered why business process consultants and management consultants are important. This is it. Sometimes you just need someone else to come along and poke holes in your business to make it better.
I just hope that the next time they have a gift card wielding customer come in, they know what to do with them...
Professor and Executive Director of the Melbourne Entrepreneurial Centre at The University of Melbourne
5 年Several years (decades?) ago I came across a term that still comes to mind at least once a day...WAYMISH!! Why Are You Making? It So? Hard........for me to spend my money? Basically, you have customers who want to do business with you and you have put processes and procedures in place that stop them - and in most cases, you don't even know it. I often wonder how many managers have actually tried the experience of being customers of their own business?
Non Executive Director
5 年Without business process it is hard to survive and thrive!
Looking to use retirement to return to a writing career.
5 年Having a gift voucher that is only valid online and not in a bricks-and-mortar store is not an acceptable business model and may even breach consumer or contract legislation in some countries. This needs escalating as high up the management chain as possible and it needs settling in your favour. For the voucher to fail at point of sale is bad enough; it displays lack of foresight and inadequate systems testing (or a cynically corporate mind-set somewhere at upper management level). For the customer services team to suggest such a Byzantine method of getting the goods you want is a major corporate fail all round. And even ethical companies are companies, and have to do company stuff to enable them to acheive their ethical objectives.
Entrepreneurship - Practitioner, Advisor, Educator, Author
5 年Computer says no