National Clothesline

When Staples first opened its doors in 1986, it was the first big box retailer dedicated to office supplies.

Until then, small businesses and regular consumers bought pens and paper the same way our

grandparents bought groceries — at a small, usually family-owned, business that carried a limited selection.

But if you needed a calculator, or what was called an adding machine in those days, you had to go to an entirely different store that sold business machines. By applying the big-box concept, Staples became a true one-stop source for office supplies.

The target market was huge. Not only did Staples attract individual customers shopping for their home offices, it became the preferred supplier for businesses of all sizes. By the mid-1990s Staples ’ annual sales surpassed the $3 billion mark and it looked like the sky was the limit.

Unfortunately, as they approached the end of the decade, Staples was no longer the only game in town. By that time two other big-box office supply companies (Office Max and Office Depot) opened their doors. As a result, Staples lost its differentiation in the marketplace.

Tom Stemberg, founder and chairman of Staples, decided it was time to go to their customers to find out what could be done to regain Staples ’ lead in the industry.

What he heard, loud and clear, was that service had to improve if you’re really going to differentiate yourself. Stemberg soon realized that without the pricing and inventory advantage it used to hold, Stalpes ’ future success depended on attracting customers based on the shopping experience.

After remodeling all of the stores to not look so much like warehouses, he turned his attention to the interpersonal side of the shopping experience.

He wanted his salespeople to play a more active role by possessing the required knowledge to help business owners make better purchase decisions. This required significant amounts of training and a new philosophy of how associates interacted with customers.

If a customer asked where the pens were, associates were no longer supposed to just point them to aisle three; they had to personally walk them over and remain with them to help make their selection.

Finally, they looked at their store policies to make sure they had the best return policies in the business.

The changes paid off. Sales jumped 11 percent between 2003 and 2004 while operating income soared by 26 percent.

What can a drycleaner learn from Staples’ experiences?

Customer satisfaction experts, J.D. Power and Associates, say there are four key factors customers evaluate before making the decision to choose one business over another: location; shopping experience; quality of service; and price.

People don’t necessarily sit down and consciously analyze each of these four factors before deciding where to take their cleaning. They just balance these four factors in their minds when they decide to take their clothes to a cleaner.

Locating your stores in the most visible and accessible places available should be your number one priority. Customers want convenience. That ’s a big part of why they use your services. If you’re not conveniently located, you’re at a disadvantage that’s difficult, and sometimes impossible, to overcome.

I’m often asked, “Should I spend x-number of dollars for a prime location or should I take the hidden location for the lower rent? ” I almost always recommend the prime location.

I recall a visit 15 years ago to a drycleaner in California. I thought he was crazy when he told me his rent was $10,000 a month for 2,400 square feet of space. That was until I found out his annual sales, over the counter, were $2,500,000!

If you’re already in a less than prime location, you have to do something to make yourself more convenient, like opening a well-located drop store, developing a route service or, if necessary, move. If you do nothing, you ’ll wither away, slowly but surely.

Most drycleaners are too busy managing personnel and fixing machinery to give consideration to what kind of experiences their customers have. Oh sure, they might repaint the call office every ten to 15 years, but making customers feel good requires more.

The shopping experience is difficult to define – let alone quantify. Yet the shopping experience — or your customers’ expectations of what they believe the shopping experience will be like — can be the most critical factor in choosing a drycleaner.

This is especially true where competing drycleaners are similar in terms of pricing and quality.

To complicate matters more, the shopping experience should be broken down into three individual touchpoints:

• Ambiance of the physical facility (cleanliness, odors, noise, etc.)

• Interpersonal experience (courtesy, knowledge and availability of the staff, etc.)

• Store policies (days open, store hours, return policy, etc.)

Consider the last time you renewed your driver’s license. Were the workers at the D.M.V. concerned with making sure that each piece of information on your license was completely accurate? Did they verify your address, you height, your eye and hair colors, and your weight?

Now, while you’re thinking back on that experience, was it a pleasant one? Do you look forward to going back to the D.M.V.? You ’re one in a million if you do!

That’s the difference between just getting the job done and providing a truly pleasant experience.

Of course, how well you clean and press their clothes is important to your customers, but they expect good work. That ’s a given.

J.D. Power and Associates recently conducted a study of dining satisfaction, covering restaurants from fast-food to fine dining, and one thing always held true: people are more forgiving of poor service than of poor quality.

If a restaurant screws up in either area, customer satisfaction quickly heads south. But over time they begin to forgive the waiter who left them waiting for the check, or forgot to bring that second glass of wine. However, if they get one bad steak, don ’t hold your breath waiting for that customer to return.

For the vast majority of customers, price is the least important reason for choosing one drycleaner over another. Of course, the small minority, to whom it does matter most is the most vocal. More often than not, price complaints are the result of meeting but not exceeding basic levels of customer service and quality. This leaves a company vulnerable to attack from just about every angle, including price.

Some cleaners make the fatal error of believing that if they are an economy brand, or market their services based on price, that customer satisfaction is not important. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is a threshold of customer satisfaction that every company must meet regardless of how low it prices its services.

The real key to long-term success is customer satisfaction. Customers will readily pay a premium price for a service they deem to be exceptional. Satisfy the needs of your customers and you can charge premium prices that customers will gladly pay.