Is this miserable customer experience caused by incompatible
software formats or by poor employee training in a retail store?
I was giving a very important presentation at 7am the next
morning. I wanted to print out the
latest version of my notes, but of course first I needed to finish writing
them. I stopped by Staples
printing store to find out what time they closed and what formats they could
print. The clerk told me that they
closed at 9pm, could print MS Office or PDF, and that a USB drive is much
easier than a laptop to print from.
Any of you who know me personally know that I am meticulous
about following instructions when something is important and I want to get it
right. So what did I do? I saved both my notes and my powerpoint
handout summary as PDFs on a USB drive and took them over to Staples at 8pm so I
had an hour to spare. I tried the notes
first. I got an error that was pretty
vague, but ended with “call over a clerk for assistance.” So I did.
He told me that the system couldn’t print PDFs. Apparently, I had been misinformed. Of course since I created the files on my
laptop, the original Word file was still at the hotel. And I only had an hour until the store
closed. The race was on.
I raced back to the hotel, turned the computer back on,
saved the original Word and PPT files on the USB, and raced back to Staples. I plugged the USB into
the printing hardware and crossed my fingers.
It printed just fine. But then I
realized that I couldn’t print the PPT in handout form because the interface
was just for printing and it defaulted to the whole file. One slide per page. Very awkward during a presentation to have to
keep flipping. So I tried to print the
original PDF just to see what would happen.
It worked fine. It turns out, the
first clerk was the correct one. I had
run back to the hotel and re-saved the files for nothing. The first error was just one of those
computer gremlins and the clerk could have just told me to try it again. Stupid me for believing him when he said PDFs
were incompatible. But he seemed to
certain. I told him (nicely) about his
error and he just shrugged. He wasn’t
even sorry.
Meanwhile, I had just lost an extra hour that I could have
spent enjoying Time Square, which happens to be one of my favorite
neighborhoods. I couldn’t stay out too
late because of my early meeting, so that hour was a big one. Expletive
expletive.
So I repeat the question in my title. Is this Microsoft’s fault for having its
Office programs hard for Staples to integrate?
Or was it Staples’ fault for crappy training of its clerks to know
something so basic as what file formats could be printed in house? Or perhaps my fault for trusting any of
them?
And now for the bonus question. What really matters from a commercial
perspective is “which brand got hurt the most from my bad experience?” It was Staples.
They were proximate to the problem.
When I was frustrated, it was their logo, their store, their employees I
was surrounded by. Even if MS was at
fault, I am not sure my natural brain wiring allows me to attribute the blame
to them. No hit to their net promoter
score.
But Staples isn't out of the Customer Engagement race yet. I sent them an email explaining what happened to see how they responded. I got an email back from Corporate telling me that I would receive a direct response from the NYC store manager in 2-6 hours. That was 24 hours ago. I am still waiting. Strike 2.
