PRINTUNSATISFIED
How far can one man take the adage “the customer is always right?”
Alex Luft
Alex "A.P." Luft complained to 10 of the largest companies furnishing Americans with household items. Eight of them sent him replacements for the very products that had left him unsatisfied.
July 15, 2009 | 12:00 p.m. CST
I wrote to Suave because of its trademark promise to replace any product that didn’t fully satisfy me. “We will do everything within our power,” the Web site declares, “to help women say yes to beautiful and unleash the goddess within every mom.” Never mind that I’m not a woman or that my inner goddess needs no unleashing. I meant to hold Suave to its promise.
Was I “fully satisfied” after stepping out of the shower? I still wished for well-defined abs and a degree in engineering. My level of satisfaction could have been higher. So I did what any reasonable customer would do. I complained about the body wash: I attempted to use it in the shower, and — I don’t know if it’s because it was too watery or something — the body wash kept washing off my body. What I mean is, before I could scrub myself, it would just slide right off my skin. I wasn’t able to work up a satisfactory lather. This made for a frustrating and unproductive shower experience.
I signed the letter A.P. Luft, as I would for all complaints to 10 of the largest companies providing Americans with household items and waited patiently for a reply.
Within a few days, Chris Green of Suave’s consumer services e-mailed to explain my bottle might have been “stored under adverse conditions.” Unilever, Suave’s parent company, soon sent me a coupon to replace thebody wash that washed too well.
The idea is that the customer is right above all else. The phrase grew from Chicago retail giant Marshall Field’s famous quote that “Right or wrong, the customer is always right” and spread through the industry. But the retail pioneer didn’t know what he was getting us into — the motto was a marketing ploy to encourage customers to feel comfortable with their purchases, and it wasn’t really meant as a policy to dictate the relationship between obstinate buyer and gracious seller. No one intended for middle management to pick up the phrase as an 11th commandment and repeat it like a piece of American gospel or post it in coffee-stained break rooms across the country.
So I didn’t mind wrangling with Kraft over the appropriateness of their packaging. I bought a cup of your Easy Mac product because I’d heard it made for a convenient lunch option. I decided to take it on a day hike (I often go 20 miles a day). I sat down around noon to enjoy my Mac and discovered that I would need to obtain VERY hot water to make the Mac. In the middle of the wilderness, this was anything but Easy. I understand that everyone has a different definition of Easy, but I wish the packaging had been more clear.
Kim McMiller from Kraft had a good explanation for me: “We select colors and graphics that, when combined, will create packaging that clearly conveys important information, and that is both eye catching and fun.” Then she thanked me for helping them to improve their product. And that thank-you came with coupons for three cups of Easy Mac to replace the one I’d purchased.
Four cups of Easy Mac for the price of one? I’d stumbled upon a way to make ends meet in our near-catatonic economy. I was in the mood for seafood, so I wrote to Starkist Tuna. I wrote that my canned fish was too “gooshy” and didn’t look as much like a fish as I thought it should. They replaced my can of tuna with a coupon for three new ones.
Eight of the 10 companies responded like Starkist and replaced my product or even reimbursed me with multiple offerings. Only one company, Trident Chewing Gum, took a stand with a polite response but no hand outs. Because I’d accused their gum of turning my “pearly whites” into “dingy beiges,” they e-mailed a set of instructions on how to properly chew gum (two pieces, four times a day, for at least 20 minutes per session, for four weeks). Maybe they thought chewing would slow down my complaining.
After all, these companies dedicate resources and time to deal with inane complaints like mine. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, over 2 million Americans are employed in positions that involve little more than fielding requests from customers. In 2006, customer service job growth was projected to increase “much faster” than most other occupations in the coming years.
“The ability to deal patiently with problems and complaints and to remain courteous when faced with difficult or angry people is very important,” the Bureau’s Web site reads. The median wage for a customer service representative was listed at $13.62 per hour. I guess that’s the going price for their patience.
Customer service workers treated me with unflappable politeness and respect, such as when I called in to Mars, the parent company of M&Ms. A woman named Marsha picked up the phone and took my case number.
“Looks like you ended up with some chewy peanuts, Mr. Luft?”
I’d told Mars in my letter that they were, in fact, so chewy that they’d have put George Washington Carver to shame. “That’s right.”
She gave me a litany of explanations — it could have been an old peanut, it could have been a bad batch of peanuts, the tried and true “improper storage” defense — all while I feigned interest with strategically situated “uh-huhs” and “you bets.” Her pitch rose when she confirmed that our five-minute conversation was indeed about a 1.74 oz pack of M&Ms purchased for 50 cents.
She told me to have a great weekend. Before I could end the call, I heard Marsha issue an if-I-have-to-deal-with-one-more-customer-bitching-about-tiny-chocolate-candies-I-might-tell-them-where-to-put-them sigh.
I felt an unexpected sympathy for Marsha, like a boxer might feel for his opponent in the late rounds of a fight. I could remember what it was like to be in her place, when I worked in a bakery and an overly tanned housewife asked me to write “Congratulations on Your 10th Wedding Anniversary, Angela and Steve, Keep on Trucking!” on a cake that only measured four inches across. I would have tried to explain the physics of writing with icing, but I knew that in the end she would be right. The customer is always right.
The author of Happy Hour is 9 to 5, Alexander Kjerulf, points out that a company that adopts the idea of a customer always being right is often doing a disservice to its own workers. They value a consumer, who might only spend a small amount, more than the people paid much higher wages every day.
Marsha, the unlucky Mars employee charged with my chewy peanuts complaint, didn’t deserve to put up with my pettiness. Marsha probably just comes in every day, does the best job she can at filing consumers’ insanities into categories about improper storage and bad batches and goes home to try to forget it all. It’s really not fair that the system values me, the customer, so much more than it values its Marshas.
But the fact remains that as long as Americans are defined by their buying power, customer service is here to stay. Quilted Northern’s parent company, Georgia-Pacific, took the checkered flag for replying within one business day. My complaint: On multiple occasions I left the bathroom with toilet paper stuck to my person. I don’t know if it’s possible for toilet paper to go bad, but this particular pack just seemed to be past its prime.
A coupon to replace my toilet paper was already in the mail. They seemed to assume my indebtedness — like I owed them my loyalty. They want me to consider myself a Quilted Northern man, spurn all lesser toilet papers, and insist on wiping my ass with nothing less.
Perhaps no other companies are more concerned with customer loyalty than those that produce naturally addictive products. Anheuser-Busch is serious about keeping me a Bud drinker. I told them that my last six-pack tasted too “Belgian” and that I suspected some tinkering with the recipe after their merger with InBev, the European brewing powerhouse bent on world domination, one pint at a time. I hoped to spark some legitimate debate about the state of America’s economy. But when Jamie from customer service called, she avoided the topic, and we instead talked about the beer’s “flatness” as my complaint.
“Did you recognize that usual sound when you popped open the bottle?” she asked, which reminded me of how many Buds I had popped open. “Did you try more than one?”
Because Missouri state regulations prevent Busch from sending free beer coupons through the mail, I received a t-shirt and a ball cap, with my choice of red or navy on the latter. Now I can wear that tee and show everyone how much beer I drink, what kind of beer I drink and how much that beer choice defines me. Bud has transformed me into a walking advertisement and a reliable ad. As a customer I’m probably right about the beer I drink.
Companies might not even understand how deeply they penetrate the average American pysche, and that’s why I wanted to tell Coca-Cola about the pain I’d suffered after trying their product: I bought a bottle of Coke Zero because I love the taste of Coke but can’t stand the calories. I’ve inherited my mother’s thighs. Anyway, I was really let down by the taste of Coke Zero. It doesn’t taste like Coke. It tastes like Pepsi. It tastes just like Pepsi.
Needless to say, I’m going to veer away from the Zero from now on, but I hope to remain a loyal Coke customer. My father was a Pepsi man, and we don’t speak.
Coca-Cola wasn’t interested in untangling the brand-based personalities of my family tree. They sent me a coupon for a free six-pack and told me the “details of your experience have been shared with [our] quality control professionals.”
I only bought one bottle of Coke Zero for $1.25, and they sent me a coupon for a six-pack. Father issues or not, I’m a very important customer to Coca Cola. And, they’re probably well aware of the insatiable lust for stuff that drives the American consumer, the one that reminds me of my favorite children’s book in which giving a mouse a cookie also entails supplying a glass of milk, a napkin and, eventually, a second mortgage.
The more we have, the more we want. The last thing a company wants to see is a satisfied customer. A satisfied customer has no more need to buy. Corporate America wants me to buy its products, grow to find them inadequate and then buy something bigger or better as soon as I need it.
General Mills cultivates the insatiable consumer. I wrote to tell them that Wheat Chex tasted entirely too healthy. “I don’t see how you can expect anyone to eat these things.” And they responded with a meek explanation about creating cereals to appeal to a wide range of tastes. Never mind that I complained about not liking the taste of their product in the first place; they sent me coupons for not only a new box of cereal but also a discount on a second box.
Complaining yielded results and left me with an inflated sense of worth. And so I was initially troubled that Campbell’s Soup refused to answer a couple of e-mails I sent decrying their vegetable soup as really being “more like a stew.” They didn’t send any free cans. They didn’t send an explanation. There were no apologies made. Perhaps someone at Campbell’s recognized my complaints for what they were: half-hearted attempts to glean happiness from a basketful of products bought at the grocery store.
At least in this case, the customer wasn’t right. Maybe Campbell’s knows that they can’t please everyone, and that customers don’t know what they want until someone tells them what that thing is. It wasn’t worth Campbell’s time to cater to my culinary distinctions. Maybe I wasn’t right to have devoted so much of my life to wanting and not enough to being satisfied.
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