J.D. Associates Retail POS Solutions Blog

How Many People Does it Take to Inflate a Basketball?

  

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Last weekend I had fifty bucks in my pocket and was going to buy an "official size" basketball.  I went to a big-box sporting goods chain; they sell everything from golf clubs to yoga mats.

I walked in the front door and was greeted by two manager-acting, lanyard-swinging greeters. We said hello and I was on my way to find a basketball.  It didn't take long; I knew what I wanted: good grip; official size; no more than fifty dollars. I plucked the ball off the shelves and made my way to point-of-sale.  As I approached the greeters, it occurred to me that I ought to have the ball inflated as it seemed squishy. Since both greeters looked underemployed at the moment, I decided to give one of them a job-inflate the ball. I waited at least 15 minutes. In that amount of time, the 18-wheeler outside the store could have had all of its wheels pumped for a cross-country trip.  When the store employee came back, he silently walked past me and started to rummage through a box, trying to find something that would inflate the ball.  He disappeared again and came back 10 minutes later with a rock-solid ball.  I thanked him and went to the register where it only got worse. 

I'm a line-loser; I ALWAYS stand in the wrong line.  At the bank the person in front of me is buying a new home and has paperwork.  At the grocery store, the register tape breaks just as I finish dumping my cart contents on the conveyor belt.  You get the picture. 

Well at the sporting goods store, it took 20 minutes for me and my basketball to get through the line at the point of sale; no one was paying attention except everyone behind me.  I know I rolled my eyeballs like a rebellious teenager. I'm sure I puffed or huffed a time or two. No one noticed. I changed lines with my friend who was holding my place in the other line (in the event her line went faster than my line).The security tags wouldn't come off the $330.00 order in front of me.  There were tags missing from some of the merchandise in the other line. No one noticed the customer impatience except every customer in the line. There was lots of eyeball-rolling. There were lots of line-losers to keep me company. No line was the right line in that store that day. There were some under-the-breath remarks like, "Where's the manager?" "Who's in charge here?"

LESSON FOR BUSINESS OWNERS AND MANAGERS:

The bottom line was: no one, not the cashiers, not the greeters not the invisible mangers were paying attention to their customers.  But the customers were paying attention. That day, customer loyalty was not built by anyone standing in those two lines. Buzz was created but not the kind of buzz that will build a business.