At Bergdorf Goodman recently, I witnessed the following conversation:
Sales Rep: “Can I help you?”
Customer, holding a white shirt up: “Do you have this in black?”
Sales Rep: “No, we only ordered it in white.”
Customer: “So could you order it in black if I wanted it?”
Sales Rep: “No.”
You do not need to have studied customer relations to question the soundness of the sales representative’s approach. She did not have to venture that the store had only ordered it in white when asked a simple yes or no question by the customer. People do not like ambiguous answers. Furthermore, when asked by the customer for a service that seemed out of the ordinary, an extraordinary store like Bergdorf Goodman should deliver or at least give the customer a satisfactory reason why it can’t deliver. Finally, the sales representative could have suggested an alternative black shirt since the customer had verbalized a clear desire – she wants a black shirt.
As a fashion design student, I am always interested in how inter-personal relationships in the fashion industry work. One of the most important relationships is arguably that between a customer and the sales representative. It is not only a relationship that is key to sales but it is also an opportunity for the customer to experience the brand in an intimate manner. A woman who shops at a fine specialty store like Bergdorf Goodman expects the service to be as exceptional as the products on display. While the sales representative was not rude and was visibly trying to be friendly, I do not think she was being as effective as she could have been.
In the sales representative’s defense, she might have been trying to serve an unattended customer beyond her department. Nevertheless, she might have been the first point of contact that the customer had with the store and an impression was made. Ten minutes later, the same woman was being served by a different sales representative who looked more experienced. They had moved on to another rack with different black shirts in tow.