Our baby boy is growing up fast and the time came this past weekend to purchase a high chair. We headed over to Babies R Us but our first choice was out of stock.
The employee we spoke with told us to visit Toys R Us because they frequently stock similar items and that they would accept our Babies R Us coupon. This sounded fine to us, and since they both end in “R Us” we figured they must be the same company.
We found our high chair at Toys R Us and proceeded to checkout. The cashier told us that we couldn’t use that coupon “because the computer wouldn’t accept it.”
The manager strolled over to help explain the situation and told us that the Babies R Us store in our area frequently hands out false information despite requests to stop.
My wife, quick on her feet, asked the manager if she had any coupons that we could use. The manager turned around and came back with a 20% off coupon.
This was a significant discount when compared to our previous coupon and we happily completed our purchase.
When you empower your employees, your customers will be happy! Instead of making us feel like we were out of luck, doomed to pay full price, or leave the store without the product, the manager that helped us out saved the sale and got us to buy. Toys R Us got our money and will probably have our repeat business in the future because we left the store with a good feeling.
Are you restricting your employees to the point where they can’t close the sale? Empower them to help the customer and watch your sales grow.
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ron
November 4, 2005
If you think so highly of Toys r Us why are the links above for Baby Registry Finder and Babbies r registry us and not Toys r Us?
Joe
November 4, 2005
Ron: you have a keen eye. The contradiction you see is the result of contextual based advertising. Sorry for any confusion!
richard
November 22, 2005
I agree that you have to help the customer, problems sometimes come out of having to be watchful of all kinds of scams, if you give employees too much freedom to “close the deal” then you wo doubt have to watch for scams.I think life would be alot easier if there was that trust that used to be there between people.Nowadays you gotta watch out for people trying to take anything they can.Sad but true.So there will have to be a balancing act from management to ensure your employees are good people, which can also be a job in itself with all the turn around nowadays aswell.
Joe
November 22, 2005
Richard: excellent points. If we could all trust each other, the world of commerce and life in general would be a lot easier!