Our printer started acting up last week, and it is so old that with several upgrades in windows I can no longer calibrate the print cartridges, and so I needed to go to Walmart to buy a new one. Now I should stipulate here that I am not a fan of Walmart. Before moving we hadn't shopped there in years, but where we are now they are about the only game in town.
As I waited in line, the wrong line as it turned out since the other cashier ran two people through in the time it took my cashier to do one, there was a sign which said that the manager wanted my experience to be 10 and if it wasn't to call the number to talk with the manager and let them know. Well, that's a great piece of marketing, and although I certainly did not think my experience was a 10 I wasn't going to call anyone about it.
But, then the register would not take the barcode. The cashier tried every barcode on the box, tried manually entering it in, and nothing worked. So then she called for assistance. As we sat there and waited and everyone's frustrations escalated, especially those behind me, I decided to call the number and let them know we were having a problem and someone should come and help the poor cashier. Well, instead of getting a real person it went straight to a voicemail, and there was not even an option to pushing zero and getting a real person.
This only served to increase my frustration and level of unhappiness. When the other person finally came, she did not apologize for the delay, all she said was "yeah, sometimes the number doesn't work." She then punched in the number, the same one the cashier had tried, and then walked away. I do have to say that the cashier apologized, but she was not really the one causing all my frustration.
Walmart set an expectation that they were concerned about my happiness as a customer, and then failed to live up to those expectations. Actually they failed all together. They would have been much better off not setting the expectation at all then in setting it and failing so miserably. Saying "talk to the manager" and then having that exchange be with a machine is an absolute fail.
We will not always match expectations, that's a given, but our procedures to correct problems when expectations are not met need to also match the expectations, and talking to a machine does not do that. I have now left a phone message and sent an email to the store about my displeasure. I will let you know what Walmart's response is, if any. Will they continue to fail to meet expectations?
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