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Protecting a Good Customer Experience

Company leaders are responsible for cultivating and preserving high customer service standards, and Ace Hardware offers some examples of how to do it, according to a recent article.

“[I]f an employee, a group of employees, or maybe even the entire company is not delivering on the stated customer service promise, the leadership must step in to defend the culture and get it (back) to where it should be,” Shep Hyken, a customer service and experience expert, writes for Forbes.

David Zeigler, who owns Ace Hardware stores in Chicago, feels “that one of the most crucial things he could do for his organization and his employees … is to define and defend the culture,” Hyken says in the article.

Zeigler and another Ace Hardware store owner, Art Freedman, both personally intervene when they spot customer service problems, according to the article.

At one Ace location, Freedman saw employees who were socializing and didn’t notice a customer who needed help, so Freedman helped the shopper and then confronted the workers.

“He treaded delicately between a reprimand and a teaching opportunity. When he was finished, not only did the employees understand what to do, they also became defenders of the culture, as well,” the article says.

To read the entire article, click here.

About Kate Klein

Kate is profiles editor for Hardware Retailing magazine. She reports on news and industry events and writes about retailers' unique contributions to the independent home improvement sector. She graduated from Cedarville University in her home state of Ohio, where she earned a bachelor's degree in English and minored in creative writing. She loves being an aunt, teaching writing to kids, running, reading, farm living and, as Walt Whitman says, traveling the open road, “healthy, free, the world before me.”

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