Sales Prevention - C'mon Gap!

While it isn't my intention to keep disparaging the Gap, I have a perfect example of sales prevention that every business can learn from. Hey a big company is a big company...I guess.

So this holiday season I decided to buy employees "cool" jackets with the VR logo embroidered on it. Not the ordinary kind that fall apart the minute you wash them. For the girls, easy, I went to Banana and got stylin' jackets. People in the store were nice to me, and even gave me discounts. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get anything for the guys in there, I didn't like the selection and I'm kinda snobby that way.

Next stop, the GAP. I find a great jacket in the store and ask for about 20 of them.

Sales Prevention Guy (SPG): "We don't have that many but here's the number to call and they'll sell them to you. I called, they have them." Great! Easy! Or so I thought.

Next day I call and tell GAP Customer Service person (GCS1) exactly what I need and she says, "I'm sorry, this is corporate sales and we don't carry that."

Janine: "Hmmm, the nice salesguy in your store told me you had them. OK, whattaya got?"
GCS1: "Go to our site and choose from there."
Janine: Showing my age I accidentally type in www.thegap.com, and low and behold, it doesn't even redirect to www.gap.com, it goes nowhere. HOPEFULLY they own the URL. "Wow, you have ONE sweatshirt for guys and it's not even a zip up."
GCS1: "Yup."
Janine: "You have all of these great clothes and only offer one sweatshirt? Thanks anyways."

So off to the Gap site to purchase the 20 shirts. I put through the purchase and waited for days, no shirts arrived. Questioning this, since the process thus far has been slightly murky, I logged into my account and the order had been canceled. Didn't tell me, didn't email me.

Back to GAP CS.

Janine: "Hi, my order seems to have been canceled."
GCS2: "That's right. You can't order more than 10 pieces. It's because of people selling our stuff on eBay."
Janine: "Seems like you could have stopped the order on your site or given me an error code. Instead you just canceled it without notifying me? I just want to buy these as gifts, I would think you'd want people to buy more."
GCS2: "Sorry, that's the policy."

ANNOYING. Hey Gap, if you're not going to sell more than 10 pieces of an item on your site I've got a GREAT idea for you: PUT MORE THAN ONE SWEATSHIRT ON THE CORPORATE SITE.

So what do you do? You place two orders of 10 with two different credit cards. Hmmm, people ARE smart Gappers. Take some lessons from your brothers and sisters at Banana.

This is the very reason why we put such a high emphasis on Customer Service here at VerticalResponse. We believe we've won a lot of customers because of the fact that we pick up the phones, return calls, listen to our customer's great ideas and above all put out a product that people want and make it easy for them to buy.

In our experience making it easy for any customer to do business with you is key to happy customer relationships.

Gap failed on a number of occasions here.

1. SPG guy was nice, but didn't have any facts straight. He told me, "Not a problem."
2. CS1 wasn't overly helpful, made me feel like I was making my living off of eBay.
3. They didn't give me an error code when I ordered more than 10 and then canceled my order with NO notification.   CS2 didn't seem to care.
4. They put out a poor product, there site has nothing to choose from.
5. And ouch, there are a lot of people that remember you as The Gap, you might want to redirect that URL.

And while they still got my money in the end, I may think twice about doing business with them again. Now,  I'll leave them alone for a while.

Got a story of your own? Comment!

Comments

[reseller hosting]

Totally agree with you. I personally had a terrible experience with gap, I ordered a product online and received an incorrect sized item. It took over 10 phone calls to get to the agent who could help me accordingly.

[Lucia Kaiser]

You must have wanted those shirts pretty badly.

I do not have the time or inclination to deal with sloppy customer service. There is too much available to make it worthwhile for me to deal with this kind of poor CS.

Too often the public face of a retail company is its sales force. The interest that many of them show is in the form of the "This is our policy" line. Anything more is too much of an effort.

This is where superior training and effective motivation techniques are important.

[Kevin]

No one could be worse than the phone company. This one is a doozy...

I had an account with AT&T wireless before they merged with Cingular. I'd had it for nearly two years by that point and found the service OK except for a few reception issues. I was told that if I updated my service to Cingular after the merger, that I'd get better service (something about a chip).

I called Cingular and asked them if they would swap me over and give me a new chip. I'd expected that this would be a painless transaction since I had been a customer for so long and the merger had been closed 6 months prior.

When I called, the kind CS person told me that I'd need to sign a new contract. But, the only contract that they offered was a 2 YEAR CONTRACT! What the heck!?

I informed her that I'd been a customer for years and I just wanted to upgrade equipment because their service had changed. She sympathized and let me know that there was no way around the 2 year contract.

But there was. I switched to Sprint.

[James Hipkin]

Customer service is a strategic decision. Whether a call center is a cost center, or a profit center, differentiates customer centric companies from product centric companies.

Great customer service, an experience that exceeds expectations, can contribute to changing the relationship the customer has w/ a brand from being purely transactional, “I bought it and it worked”, to a relationship w/ an emotional component. In most categories this is your best, and sometimes your only, competitive insulation.

Your experience w/ the GAP means you have no reason to choose them over a competitive offer. They think they are protecting the Brand by not having their products sold on eBay when, in fact, they are accomplishing the opposite. Their recent business results reflect this.

[Jochen]

Hi!

Big corporations honestly don't care about Customer Service. Maybe Amazon (their CS is superior!). Okay my story. I bought a washing machine at Home Depot and spent almost $1000.00 for this high tech machine - I grew up in Germany and I love technique! First, I was not going to buy such an investment at Home Depot but the Appliance Specialist (Bob) was very nice and in addition he promised me a 2 day delivery. Next day, the delivery company called me and confirmed day and time. So far, great service. But! At the time of delivery 2 High School drop outs showed up and insulted my wife with rude comments and last but not least they ripped out our front door cover (they didn't even apologize!) The best part is that they dropped the washer on the way inside. Now we have to wait another 3 days until we get a replacement unit.
I am not upset about the damaged unit or front door. It is more the fact that Home Depot doesn't care at all. I called the store and they gave me a stupid 1-800 number. The 1-800 CS people don't care - they offered me a $20 gift card. How stupid is this? He basically told me that the damaged door is not Home Depots fault. Every human being, except the customer service at Home Depot, knows that this is Home Depots fault.
From now on, I am going to buy everything locally.

[Deborah Gorski]

L.L. Bean has a nice corporate site where you can order multiples AND send them a logo to put one....but when I ordered I got no confirmation number or email to check on the status of my order. I had to call them or just wait and hope that it would arrive. That was in October. I hope they have fixed it by now. Here's the site: http://www.llbean.com/corporateSales/index.html

The state of these websites and customer service is deplorable especially when you consider that we are taking on the roles of buyer and cashier and self-customer service ...essentially doing their jobs for them so that we can have the "convenience" of buying online.

[Nicole Sims]

I am so with you.I had ordered from Old Navy (Gaps Sister Company)a few years ago. I had been a customer for years. But and when I moved overseas ran into this type of problem with Old Navy not wanting to forward a shipment overseas.I was shocked with the clueless customer service that I had received.

Keep up the good work on your blog I enjoy readining it!

[Tim]

GAP did not fail... GAP Management failed! Speaking as a quality process integration consultant, the incident shows how GAP's Management is focused on deflecting rather than solving customer issues. GAP should have given you a documented reply (which would be been tracked in their quality management system).

The level of detail in the story shows you were more than miffed. Me too [about this kind of stuff]. How sad the reality is that complaining is time consuming and unproductive for both parties unless it actually causes an improvement. Bravo effort! I'll put you down for a "I'm Mad Too, Eddie" bumper sticker. [
http://www.feeds4all.nl/Itemdetails.aspx?ItemID=8543992 url included in case you were in grade school when all that took place]

FYI: I have had similar situations where DELL cancels orders and giving no notification.