Would Your Team Buy Your Customers A Meal With Their Own Cash?

There isn't much good news around at present. The Covid-19 pandemic is still raging all over the world. Too many politicians are making the fight against the virus political, rather than just being led by the science, and the social networks are filled with fake news that seems impossible to control. It's a mess.

I don't watch the morning news on TV because every time I do glance at it - usually in a cafe rather than my home - the running order will be something like car crash, murder, explosion, police shoot phone thief dead... it's incessantly bad news.

Jodie Jackson's book 'You Are What You Read' gives some great insights into the reasons for this, but the short answer is that "cat rescued from tree" doesn't get clicks or keep people tuned in. Violence and destruction sells more ads than news about a rare beetle that was saved from extinction. There is a reason that good news only ever gets the 'and finally...' slot.

But now and again I do run into some good news - I saw a couple just today and I think there is a connection.

This story about McDonald's in the US is an example. A mother with two young kids forgot her wallet so the teenage server, Wyatt Jones, paid for her food from his own pocket. When she returned later to pay for the food, he refused and said it was his treat to her family. She shared the story of the kind kid at McDonald's on her Facebook and suggested that maybe friends could give him a tip because he had mentioned to her that he was working there and saving for a car. She raised over $32,000 on a GoFundMe page - he has some wheels!

The consumer journalist Harry Wallop shared a story on Twitter about the British retailer Argos cancelling the printed catalogue they use in store, and for people to order from home. For years, the Argo catalogue has featured everything they sell and so it's huge and very colourful. A reader saw him writing about the cancellation and asked if he could help because her sister-in-law has autism - one of her favourite activities is reading the Argos catalogue. She has been happily doing this for over 20 years and was concerned that there would be no more editions. Harry contacted Argos and soon they sent over 1,000 catalogues to their biggest fan - so she will never run out of catalogues even if they stop printing them.

What is the connection?

I can't believe that the Argos/Sainsbury's press office team had to kick this problem up to the senior management - they just made a call on doing something that would help a customer. Likewise with the McDonald's employee - he just helped out a random customer because it was a kind thing to do. The right thing to do.

It demonstrates that at a cultural level, people working inside these companies feel comfortable AND ENABLED to make decisions about actions taken by the brand that affect their customers. The young man in McDonald's would never have reached into his own pocket to help a customer if he was just flipping burgers and watching the clock - just counting the minutes until the end of his shift. The press team at Argos/Sainsbury's could have just responded to Harry by saying "it's tough - we can't please everyone."

These are also actions that are not being measured within the normal framework. The young man at McDonald's wouldn't get a slap on the back from his shift manager for helping out that customer. The press team at the Argos/Sainsbury's press office don't get a bonus for mailing out extra catalogues.

In both these cases you can see that employees are doing the right thing - the kind thing - for the customer just because they want to. There may be no rules that stop them, but there are also no guidelines suggesting this course of action and there is no automatic halo effect either.

To me it suggests two things. These companies keep their employees engaged and interested in their work - otherwise they wouldn't care enough to make these choices for the customer. Secondly, the culture of the companies has to be focused on building long-term customer relationships - not individual transactions or short-term interactions with a contact centre. These companies want to build a lifelong relationship with customers, not just sell more stuff, and the behaviour of these employees underlines this attitude.

More hospitality and retail chains need to think about this. When executives preach about culture and values, what do they really mean? Do their colleagues value their customers so much that they would happily buy a customer a meal with their own cash? Because if not, then you still have some work to do on those internal PowerPoint presentations about culture and values...

CC Photo by Carlos Macias