Mack,

Thanks for the update re: Kohl's. I agree that the store could use evangelists. However, I think there is a natural order to marketing, and before they launch that plan, they need to get their internal act together, beginning with:

1. creating a culture based on great customer experiences,
2. hiring (and firing) for good fits within that culture,
3. ongoing training of all employees, bottom to top, to ensure everyone understands what the experience looks like,
4. ensuring district managers are out visiting stores daily and correcting problems immediately,
5. holding the store managers responsible and accountable for great customer experiences,
6. holding everyone accountable for the customer experience,
7. and tying accountability to employee evaluations, pay and benefits.

This is only good news for everyone. Brands can be destroyed by horrible store managers, or mismanagers that is.

I would hate to be a Kohl's exec sitting in the audience at that conference. But being embarrassed in front of your peers can be a good motivator for change, and perhaps this will cause Kohl's to reassess their strategies for the better.

All: Paul has added a must-view slideshow pictorial of the pictures, blogger comments AND Kohl's mgmt. comments he received through his experience. It's here:
http://heehawmarketing.typepad.com/hee_haw_marketing/2007/01/hurricane_kohs_.html

Welcome the age of show not just tell...I do hope Kohl's uses this as an opportunity; so far--and with repeated tries from Paul calling them--they've blown it. Tsk. tsk.

"This is why every organization should have "community evangelists." Employees that serve as a bridge between the customers and the brand. Brand evangelists help market a brand in their community of customers, why shouldn't every company have a person that is also evangelizing the company's customers?"

Perfectly said. Their response came off as shallow PR jargon. By having people charged with evangelizing their brand, they could have shown a human side of the company, one with which we could all more easily relate.

"I would hate to be a Kohl's exec sitting in the audience at that conference. But being embarrassed in front of your peers can be a good motivator for change, and perhaps this will cause Kohl's to reassess their strategies for the better."

Bingo. And they can either address what caused the embarrassment, or just be doomed to repeat it.

Didn't Shakespeare say that once? Or maybe it was Sam Walton.

What a great story. This is the perfect case history of how NOT to handle customer relations.

Never mind about the messy store. Sounds like they have (or maybe had) a careless store manager.

It's about the suit who didn't do his job. Ignoring a question or comment from a concerned shopper is, to me, inexcusable. That's the customer relations or p.r. person's job, after all... "relating" to customers or the public. And here's a guy who is pointing something out because he cares. He's trying to help. He could have instead left the store, never contacted anyone and simply never set foot in a Kohl's again.

But by ignoring him, they prompted further action by him, which ended up making the company look bad in front of its peers.

When will they learn? This is not rocket science here. This is just common courtesy! Someone calls you, you call them back.

Quick story, if I may...

I bought a new computer from Dell last spring. I got this nice personalized email from the rep who took my call to order the machine. He gave his name and his direct phone number, saying he's my personal Dell contact any time I have a question or need anything else. Even got a follow-up email from Erik as the machine was being shipped. How nice.

When the computer came, I saw it didn't have Word loaded and I wanted it. I hadn't noticed the fine print saying Word Perfect came free with the machine, or I would have specified Word from the start.

So I called my new pal Erik in customer service. Got his voicemail telling me how important my call is and that he'll call me right back. No call. Called Erik again, and again over the next several days, with no repsonse. Now I was getting annoyed.

I finally called in marketing at Dell headquarters. I like Dell products, and I was very disappointed to see such a breakdown in their service. Plus, I wanted to see Erik embarrassed, if not fired.

Turns out Erik had quit and they had no protocol in place to automatically redirect calls to his extension. I'm sure I wasn't the only new friend of Erik's who was being ignored by what, at first, seemed like such a great customer relations setup. The marketing guy I spoke with did thank me very much for the call, aplogized and set there obviously was a flaw which they would correct. I hope they did. Like Paul, I was only trying to help because I cared.

As a retail company, isn't every Kohl's employee on the floor effectively a "community evangelist"? I don't know how they train their sales associates, but they already have so many opportunities to interact and evangelize with customers. Retail is a daily customer facing and contacting business.
I think the "community evangelist" role would be a better fit with a "hidden" corporation where we, as customers, have limited (after 10 minutes on hold) or no access (after hanging up in frustration) to representatives.

"As a retail company, isn't every Kohl's employee on the floor effectively a "community evangelist"?"

I think the problem is, too many retailers focus more on teaching the associates how to take the customer's money back to management, and not their feedback.

Mack: This is a sweet quote, which should be tacked on the wall of every business, wherever it is, serving whoever the customer is:

"...too many retailers focus on teaching the associates how to take the customer's money back to management, and not their feedback."

Nice!

A community evangelist can help fix problems between customers and businesses. For that, Mack should be commended.

Until our businesses start treating store managers and sales associates as humans, and not as vehicles for transferring wealth from customers to shareholders, I'm not confident we're truly solving problems.