A few weeks ago I was at IKEA and for the first time one of my daughters was able to go into the play area, and, more surprisingly, she wanted to go in. So we stood in line and waited an exorbitantly long-time to get her in because there was only one person registering children. Then when I got up I had to fill out a paper information sheet with all the proper information and there were several things which struck me about this.
First, it could have easily been entered into a computer rather than onto paper which would do several things. It would allow those who go to IKEA often, which is a lot of people, not to have to fill out the same paperwork each time. They could just pull it up and off we go. It would also then give IKEA incredible marketing opportunities for contacting people who they now know have children about items they sell that might be of interest to them. But they were not doing any of these things. Instead, we did it the long way all the while there were three staffers sitting on the wall of the play area talking to each other, and only casually paying attention to the children (and that’s being a little over generous).
Second, if they had my information already in a computer system, they could have several terminals available allowing me to check my daughter in without taking up staff time to do it, and then once they are entered in staff can assist us. This would greatly speed up the process and allow for greater efficiencies for me and the staff.
Later, as my youngest daughter and I were looking around, the pager they had given me (great idea) went off and so I hustled out of the furniture area, which if you’ve been to IKEA you know is not the easiest thing to do, down the elevator to the children’s area. Once there I again had to stand in line while the person in front of me collected her children which they were exceedingly slow in rounding up and moving on, and then, once the kids were all there and were putting on their shoes, rather than asking me to step forward so they could begin the next process they instead stepped away and waited for that family to leave. So then I step up and no one comes over to assist me, and so I have to tell the person standing there talking to someone else that my pager has gone off and want to know what happened, so she has to track someone down to find out.
Now I love IKEA and all of my experiences there have been great. The staff has been very helpful, and even as annoying as their layouts sometimes are in wanting you to walk through the entire store so you can buy more, I don’t mind that because they are good at paying attention to the little details. They clearly think about the customer experience and do not allow mediocrity to settle in.
But that is apparently not what they do at the children’s area, where mediocrity reigned supreme. And that mediocrity impacted the rest of my shopping experience. The areas in which they excelled where pulled down by the areas in which they were weak. Just like a barrel can only hold water up to the top of the lowest stave, making the rest of the barrel ineffective and rending the places of excellence obsolete.
They could have made this an outstanding experience for me, my daughter and also done things to help themselves out from a marketing stand point as well. But to do that they are going to have to pay attention, which they clearly aren’t, and rethink the entire system from both the customer and the business point of view. Rather than thinking of this simply as a good bonus to make available to customers, and therefore not something that is really important, then need to refocus and see this as a sub-business that is just as important as everything else they do.
What areas of our church life are we ignoring and therefore keeping us from being excellent?
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