So there I was Wednesday afternoon innocently procrastinating on Facebook when there were a bunch of documents I needed to review. I justified the Facebook travels as "market research" and felt good about it.
And then there was payoff! A friend shared this pic on his wall. And it spoke to me because of its lovely ridiculousness. We've got latkes with sour cream in the upper left corner juxtaposed with smoked ham text. You can't make this stuff up.
In my last
post, I talked about
GEICO commercials as being unintentionally exclusionary because the context assumed you were a native English speaker. I pointed out that by mid 21st century, "minorities" will represent over 50% of the U.S. population and I wondered why GEICO would want to leave 50% opportunity on the table.
And now, because the world works in mysterious ways, we have an opposite situation. In
WalMart's zeal to be inclusive, to honor and to celebrate all cultures, something has gone a bit awry. And that something is a little basic information and knowledge.
Retailers have it tough during the holidays, admittedly. Many celebrate Christmas but if there is too much Christmas, it's to the exclusion of other religions and perhaps can turn off long time shoppers who've had enough of the imbalance or repel prospective shoppers. The easiest remedy is to find ways to make connections with others to show that the retailers "care" and "respect" other traditions.
And, sometimes that means a menorah display in a corner of the store with a smattering of dreidels in another part of the store. So I'm sure that somewhere in a WalMart store the same thing happened: the menorah, the blue and white wrapping paper, some gold foil wrapped chocolate and some dreidels.
Mistakes like the one in the picture make what may have been an honest effort ring false. It's almost better not to make the effort than to make a mistaken effort like this. You've heard me talk about "Surprise and Delight" more times than you could bear this year. "Surprise and Dismay" is probably a good descriptor in this instance.
Just as I've said before (
here,
here and
here) that the little things can make a big positive difference in the perception your customers have of you, so can the little things make a big negative difference. The reason for the Buick salesman's success, the popularity of the Butterball hotline and Ramon DeLeon's high customer service scores is that in all three instances, they appreciate the fine art of detail to make things go right. And they appreciate the fine art of detail to avoid things from going wrong.
Of course they're not perfect. There are plenty of examples that Ramon DeLeon shares of orders that his team didn't fulfill correctly. He'll even Tweet or put it on his FB page for the world to see. But for each of those examples, he's always made up for the errors to keep the customer satisfied which means he's detail oriented when it comes to problem resolution, too.
In other words, it's a two way street when it comes to details. In all three examples, there is this tacit understanding that you can't just "show up" and be rewarded for your existence. Just showing up doesn't even cover the cost of doing business these days. Just showing up is like opening your eyes in the morning: you don't know if it's cold, warm, raining or snowing. All you know is that you're awake.
And the WalMart price tag is an example of just showing up. And this honest effort that rings false may not make a huge dent in WalMart revenues, but only reinforces the growing cynicism we have about retailers and other companies valuing our business.
Parissa Behnia
Idea Chef
