Power to the Depot
November 17th, 2008 | By Ian in House, Misc, Opinion, Rants, The Emerald City | 1 Comment »
I should preface this by saying that I normally do my home improvement shopping at Lowe’s. Historically, they have had better customer service and have a higher likelihood of carrying the oddball things I require for my more unusual projects.
This weekend I found myself going back and forth between Lowe’s and Home Depot as part of a home improvement project. Each time I visited Home Depot, I noticed an unnerving trend: abnormally attentive employees.
There were a lot of staff on hand and they kept stopping me and asking if I needed any help. At first I thought it was because I was one of the few people in the hardware store at 9am on a Sunday. Perhaps with my large graph paper pad, they assumed I was a mystery shopper. Maybe they just had a corporate pep rally so they could be expected to be truly helpful for a few days before going back to the norm.
I knew something was up when an employee helped me load several dozen pavers and a few bags of sand onto a cart, pushed them through checkout, and then helped me load it all into a truck. He even brought me a spare bag of sand after one tore a little bit.
I pointed out that his service was exemplary and that everyone was abnormally helpful for a big box hardware store. He confessed that they are running a new program called “Power Hour” from 8am to 8pm on weekends. During this time, they boost staff and have everyone make sure all of the customers are well attended to.
Home Depot may have just discovered the secret to weathering this economic downturn.
In a time when many companies are trying to lure in customers with lower prices, rebates, while cutting staff, at least company is spending their customer attraction dollar on its employees. In the home improvement market, they probably don’t have a lot of wiggle room for big sales and discounts. Making sure they have plenty of staff on hand who are eager to help will probably make a huge difference for them this season.
Unfortunately, it is a bit of a catch-22. They’ll have to rely on word of mouth for news of their improved service to spread. They can’t reasonably run an ad campaign shouting “We now have the customer service you want and deserve* (*Saturday and Sunday between 8am and 8pm)”. Still, this is probably a big expense for them and they are going out on a limb. If they don’t see a reasonable return, they may just drop it and go back to the way things used to be.
If you shop at a Home Depot this season and you experience exceptional customer service and attentiveness, let the staff know and maybe even let corporate HQ know.
With any luck, this is just the beginning of a revolution in big box home improvement customer service.
My wife and I have just sealed the deal on our first house! It’s a very nice little three-bed two-story semi-fixer in northern Seattle. We’ve already generated a two page remodeling project list that we sure hope gets done in a reasonable time frame. Thanks to the magic of Google Sketchup, I have a fantastic CAD layout of the entire place that should greatly help us along the way.