Customer Experience? We Don’t Need No Stinking…
I wish I was a fly on the wall when the CEO of Kohls saw this blog post: Hee-Haw Marketing: HURRICANE KOHLS!
I’ve got this Kohl’s right next to my house, and with that proximity, I’ll make a stop by every few weeks to check out the sales. Its always bad, but this Dallas, Texas Kohl’s would look more at home in New Orleans after the flood.
hmm, I hope they have my size!
I really like the jeans display. Now that’s great salesmanship!
And, maybe a nice sweater to go with those jeans?
Don’t forget to try them on!
But, there is a horrible fear I have inside me that they probably think this is just a “blawg” (whatever that is) by “some guy” (whoever he is) with a camera phone in our store (can’t we sue him for that?)
Of course, at the helm of any large organization, taking the occasional flak from the scurrying ant-like customer-base is par for the course. But, it’s not like this kid with a company with “Hee Haw” in the name, and a mySpace page, really has any clout…
Well, that is until you realize that Ben, from Church Of The Customer (”Customers go to CHURCH?” the CEO wonders out-loud) thinks Paul’s fairly sharp and reads his stuff regularly.
And, this time, he likes what he sees enough to write about it himself, replicating the photos and linking back to the originals (in their now viral-ly glow), and tossing this little nugget into the mix that the Dallas, TX Kohls never thought about when they decided to go on-break (another one?) and leave clothes all over the store while a camera-phone-crazy-blogger was loose–and pissed–in their store:
Here’s the thing: 156 million Americans use high-speed cellphone networks that allow them to take pictures like this and post them immediately to a blog where, naturally, they can spread.
From there things really take off. Let alone that Paul’s original post is collecting comments and trackbacks like a spiderweb catching flies in a dairy barn. Now, others are chiming in and linking back, all creating a torrent of anti-kohl’s opinion from some of the internet’s most widely-read thought-leaders.
- Seth comments on 60 Million Mystery Shoppers.
- Glenn Davies notes how nothing tells customers you don’t care like a good mess.
- Jim Durbin and Walter Lim join the conversation happening in Ben’s comments (original author included).
- Meanwhile, other would-be customers are now adding to the tip jar:
- Drew quotes Mack, who’s quoting Paul. He also notes that he flatly recommends you shop at Target (ooh, insult to injury) and laughs about Kohl’s tagline on their website “expect great things”.
- Meanwhile Mack’s blog post draws a few precious comments including this one from Tim Jackson.
Sadly, I’d be willing to bet… that the Kohl’s CMO will never see this and that 99.9% of the CMO’s out there never see this kind of thing. Very, very few seem to even know what Google is for that matter… joking of course, sort of.
- Until now, we’ve only seen Marketing Geeks speak up, but now the general public starts to raise their virtual hands and provide the real damning evidence that this isn’t a one-time thing:
- Amber Christopher: “I stopped shopping at Kohls for the same reasons I stopped shopping at K Mart……clutter, sad overworked staff, and my dislike for physically digging for bargains. I shop at Target…..allot.”
- Moda di Magno: “Does everyone understand why you WASH everything you buy BEFORE you wear it? Thank you Paul for that helpful reminder!”
- Cheryl Thompson: “When a marketing blogger sneaks a digital camera into a post-Christmas Kohl’s you get to see what it looks like when the customer truly doesn’t matter.”
- Drew McLellan: “If the sweaters are going to be in a pile on the floor, why not show it that way in the ad?!”
Now, some of the dust settles, and the comments all seem to converge on one of two prevailing opinions:
- Kohl’s will never respond, because they don’t care.
- It doesn’t matter if Kohl’s responds, because I’m still not ever going back.
Until… Kohl’s does respond. Well, sort of. The VP of PR (”veepr?”) leaves a voicemail for Paul with a, well, personalized (it appears they read the site) but generally boilerplate response.
“…we do value your patronage?”
[Sidebar: Do english-speaking people use that word anymore? Wikipedia's entry on Patronage doesn't help because it makes someone using "patronage" in a sentence sound even more disconnected from their user-base.]
But, Paul does put together a nice slideshow detailing some of his photos offset by Kohl’s “official” marketingspeak as well as comments from people on the ‘Net.
Look, if I were driving the ship at Kohl’s, I guess I could sluff this off as more yadda, yadda… but it is already listed in Google as the 26th entry for the keyword “Kohls”
After google indexes all these other responses, wouldn’t it be interesting if you searched for Kohls or Kohl’s in google and HEE HAW Marketing comes up first, not Kohls.com?
Technorati Tags: kohls, marketing, guerrilla, cameraphone, churchofthecustomer, customer, retail, blogging
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6 comments for “Customer Experience? We Don’t Need No Stinking…”
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Well, Robert, I LOVE this post! By far the most comprehensive rundown. Just awesome!
Anyway, I’ve been keeping an eye on the search rankings, too. I suspect, after all the spiders do their business, that’ll it’ll begin to rank higher and higher in the next few days. I guess time will tell, but I don’t think Kohl’s will enjoy this black eye so high up in their search.
Thanks for posting about this, and I’ll keep you up to date on whether or not I hear anymore from them.
One other thing, David over at the Brand Experience lab, picked up the story, and is the keynote speaker for the National Retail Federation conference in New York next week. Guess what example he’ll be using? Hmmm…
Excellent post and great recap of the whole spiraling mess. It really does make you question the intelligence and brain power over at Kohl’s. I mean, just a simple, “hey Paul, man what a mess you caught there. We know that things like this can lead to negative perceptions of our brand and we recognize it can happen in multiple stores, but Kohl’s really does value our customers and we’re committed to making things better. Pardon our mess while we clean up a little.” Something like that would have been far more effective than the canned response Paul got. I know Paul would’ve given’em credit for at least recognizing that he wasn’t a patron and was trying to help them fix their problem. Instead… bad.
Hmm.
One day later, googling the word “kohls” comes up with Paul’s original post at number seven, and references to it at 10 and 12. Near as I can tell, this hasn’t even hit digg or netscape yet… hmmm….
oops. It was dugg already: here. I clicked and added my .02 kB
Awesome! Thanks for digging it! And, Tim, Maybe you should just take over? Up for a move to Wisconsin?
i worked as a customer service supervisor for kohls(k-holes) for 8 years resigning this december. the reason i left is because no one cares how the store looks,if you complain to management you will get anything you want,just mention a call to corporate.honestly the only time the store gets attention is when they are getting a “store visit” from the district manager.believe it or not the store managers get paid 100 thousand or more,the employees are overworked & not paid enough,yeah right “expect great things”but only if you don’t shop at k-holes.