Category Archives: Customer Experience

Thanks, Decathlon – Customer experience feedback

Leave a reply

It’s been quite some time since I’ve written anything about Customer Experience, a topic that’s been a passion of mine since working a long time ago in Boston at Forrester Research. (Also, since moving to Spain 15 years ago and seeing the total lack of focus in this area.)

Now, a post back at it. For anyone who doesn’t know Decathlon it’s like the Walmart of sports stores here in Spain (and other countries in Europe). Decathlon is in 57 countries and is the largest sport retailer in the world – they’re pretty big. And they have almost any sport gear and apparel you can imagine at great prices. In general the people that work there are friendly, nothing over the top or special, but nice enough.

Here’s what happened: at the checkout, for some time now, they give you the option of having your receipt printed in paper or emailed to you. Now most of the time I’ll just print it out because it seems more secure, even though I know it’s a waste of paper. The other day I bought a few articles of clothing. For some reason I decided this time that I would have it emailed to me. I double checked my email, confirmed the purchase, and out I went, happy as a clam.

Unfortunately, I later discovered that not only did one of the articles of clothing not fit at all like it looked on the store model (surprise surprise), but also I never received the electronic receipt. Yes, I checked spam, etc etc. oops.

Here’s what happened next: to my surprise when I brought the article back to decathlon and talked to the person at the front of the store and explained that I never got the receipt, they were totally fine with it. As long as I was going to exchange the item for another one and not interested in getting my money back there was no problem.

Wow. Since when did the customer is always wrong turn around over here? I have to say I was pretty impressed. Thanks, Decathlon, for understanding a common customer’s situation!

A positive Customer Experience renewing my kids’ Spanish passports. And one essential thing not to forget!

Leave a reply

One of the objectives of this blog when I first started writing over 5 years ago was to talk about my Customer Experience anecdotes and reflections here in Spain, a country that I think is pretty fair to say was highly lacking in this area when I moved here almost 15 years ago. I came from a background working in Customer Experience research, so it was definitely a shock to say the least to see how “Atención al cliente” worked (or didn’t over here) and the idea that the customer is always wrong. I’m still not sure how many times I’ve been hung up on from someone from Customer Service here…

Things have gotten better over the years, but there’s still a ways to go.

In any case, I think it’s only fair to give credit where credit’s due – in this blog I wanted to share a positive experience I had at the local police station renewing my sons’ Spanish passports. Both of my children’s passports expired in August, but since we didn’t have any travel plans thanks to Covid, and considering everything that’s been going on with Covid, we just got around to renewing them now. I made an appointment online using my DNI (National ID card). I only made a single appointment as it didn’t give me the option to select for two, and I assumed that I should do it this way since the appointment was for a minor. As usual with any governmental procedure I read through the info on the site and prepared all the necessary items for the appointment (or so I thought). We all went (the mother and the father both have to be there) with our passports, 30€ for each renewal, and new photos. When we got to the local comisaría in Majadahonda we didn’t even have to wait 5 minutes. I think it helped that it was right after Christmas and we walked in with two little (and loud kids). Unfortunately when we sat down to start everything the first thing the police officer asked me for was something I hadn’t brought along – the kid’s DNIs. Note to self (and whoever else this might be of use for): whereas to me in the US a passport is the ultimate form of identification above all else, here in Spain the DNI is the essential one. I guess I just assumed that going with passports we wouldn’t need our DNIs as well, since in the US that would be like bringing a license with me. But not here.

Fortunately, the police officer was very nice and asked if we lived far from the station. When we said about 10 minutes he said it wasn’t a problem to run home and get the DNIs so we could finish the process. Also, as I was waiting outside with my kids while my husband ran home to get the DNIs the officer came out to hand me some authorization forms that I could start filling out to speed things along.

When we had the DNIs the process was easy and smooth, and the police were very nice throughout. It probably helped that my kids are little and cute, but it definitely could have gone worse and/or we could have been told to come back another time or could have only had one passport renewed as I really only had one appointment.

A couple key things:

  • You can make the appointment for each child using his/her own DNI on the web site (https://www.citapreviadnie.es/citaPreviaDniExp/). I assumed that I had to use my DNI as an adult (I also heard another woman had assumed this same thing while we were there)
  • Don’t forget to bring DNIs!!
  • You need to bring 30€ in cash for each passport (renewals) and have a new passport-sized photo

Thanks to the police for being understanding and accommodating! Note to any Customer Service folks over here in Spain – empathy and generally just being nice can go a long way!

Customer Experience during COVID-19 – more important than ever!

Leave a reply

If you’ve followed my blog in the past and/or read some of my past entries you’ll know that Customer Experience is something I’m very passionate about. There are two main reasons for this: 1) I used to work on a research team at Forrester Research dedicated to the importance of Customer Experience and showing the real ($$) benefits of companies taking this seriously, and 2) when I moved to Spain I realized how I had really taken customer experience for granted in the US. Spain had a LONG way to go. Fourteen years later the whole Customer Experience “thing” has definitely gained importance over here, but the customer is still not always the priority. In general in Spain I usually go into “Atención al cliente” calls assuming that they will tell me I’m wrong or being the one to blame. Some companies are better than others, but overall it’s still not a priority. You can find a number of past articles in my blog about my experiences.

One thing I’m pretty clear about: customers don’t easily forget bad experiences! Now, as we’re on the brink of a severe economic crisis that is affecting and paralyzing almost all sectors, it’s the best time for companies to show customers that they care about them and give them something memorable. When the COVID-19 crisis is over and things get back to normal (yes they will), I can guarantee that people would be more than likely to do business again with a company that has treated them well and/or showed them care during the crisis than ones that have put their own priorities first or ignored customers during this time of uncertainty.

A couple of my experiences:

  • Hotels. I had 2 different trips that have completely gone out the window (and 2 possible out the windows) with this crisis. In both of the non-salvageable cases I wrote directly to the hotels that I had reserved to cancel. In one case I paid for a non-refundable weekend stay at a hotel in Barcelona. Given the situation I wrote asking to use the already-paid for weekend at a later date, not trying to get my money back. I was very happy to receive a personal note back a few days later saying that this wouldn’t be a problem. In the future if I have to make another trip I will definitely consider booking with Hotel Balmoral again. In the other case I had a hotel reserved in Marrakech with free cancellation; I’m still waiting for them to get back to me to confirm the change.
  • Airlines. This is a big one. The airline industry is being completely destroyed by this epidemic, and there’s not much that can be done with global travel restrictions. However, again, at some point in the future people will start traveling again and airlines will be back up and running. Although loyalty in the airline industry is pretty much limited to gaining points and not any real loyalty to the brand itself, I’m sure that a customer will be more likely to try to fly with an airline that has treated them well with any reservation cancellations or flight changes during this time than one that has not. I’ve spoken with quite a few friends that had trips that have been cancelled, and they’ve had pretty much a lack of response/clear answers from the airlines. Tomorrow I have to call Iberia to cancel a reservation I made with avios; since it’s not completely cancelling a full-cost flight, but rather one booked with points, it should be easier. Still I’ll be interested to see how they handle the call.
  • Online shopping. This is probably one of the few areas that is having an incredible boost these days. All I have to say is thank goodness for Amazon! We may not be able to leave the house, but I’ve been able to order a number of things to keep the kids entertained, and the delay has been minimum.
  • Also, another great experience with Mizuno (not related to the current crisis, but just a great example of customer experience): I bought some new running shoes a few weeks, a new style from Mizuno, a brand I love. Unfortunately for whatever reason the new style just didn’t work for me – I tried running with them 4 or 5 times, but every time afterwards ended up with pain in my legs. (I’m pretty sure I was straining some muscles that I wasn’t used to using.) Anyway, I contacted Mizuno to ask if I could return the shoes even though I had already used them a few times. Their response wasn’t 100% clear, but I tried anyway. If not it would have been 140€ thrown down the drain. After shipping the shoes back to Mizuno (with a pre-paid return label) I was happy to receive an email less than a week later acknowledging their receipt, apologies that I wasn’t 100% satisfied and telling me that a credit was already being processed to my account.

Now, as soon as I can actually leave the house and go outside to run again the first thing I will do is order new running shoes from Mizuno. They will definitely count on my business in the future.

 

 

Flying across the ocean with kids – leave the stroller at home or consider a cheap one

Leave a reply

I was just looking back at some of my old posts, and I thought it could be a good idea to write a short, simple post about this to make a point – airlines don’t know how to handle strollers. Out of 4 international trips with kids that I’ve taken, my strollers have been broken twice – once with Delta/KLM and once with Iberia — and both times “conveniently” when I’ve been traveling alone. And don’t think the flight/ground attendants were so helpful when both times I was left with a baby/toddler asleep in my arms (and in one case a baby and another little one). Note that both strollers were left at the door of the airplane, not checked in previously.

If this happens to you the most important thing is to go directly to the airline counter when you land to fill out an incidence form (even if it is the last thing you want to do). Then you’ll probably have to go to the store where you purchased the stroller to get an estimate of how much it will cost to replace or fix it. In the case of Lufthansa I went through all of this since I had brought my expensive stroller with me. It was a bit of a headache, but in the end they paid to replace everything. (see: Delta/KLM and the broken stroller (continued)

In the case of Iberia, during my last trip I decided to purchase a cheap umbrella stroller online to have when I arrived since it wasn’t necessary for me to travel with one as my youngest was older. Iberia decided to break it (wheels and entire frame missing/destroyed) when I landed back in Madrid at 7am from Boston (direct flight by the way). In this case it was going to be more hassle for me to go to a store and get all of the necessary forms, and given the cost of the stroller I didn’t pursue it further. However, it doesn’t seem right to me that they can get away with it. In any case what Iberia should do is offer a voucher or gift card to be used at your discretion. The damaged items web site has a voucher as an option, but when you try to get this you get a strange error message which forces you to call Customer Service (not toll-free). When I did call it turns out that apparently they do this with bags, but in the case of baby strollers it’s not an option. So they shouldn’t even have this option on the site since it was clear it was a baby stroller…

I’m glad to finally be getting away from this phase of traveling with strollers, but I thought it might be helpful to share my experiences for those with upcoming trips. Airlines (Delta/KLM, Iberia, etc) need to be more careful with these kinds of items! And in the case that something happens the post-service reclamation should be a lot less headache-filled for those who already have enough headaches with little kids!

The Iberia Oro (Gold) Status upgrade – WIM. My customer experience.

Leave a reply

So, what does it mean being upgraded from Plata (Silver) to Oro (Gold) Status with Iberia? Not too much really. It was more exciting for the colors to change from silver to gold on my phone app then anything else. I had the barometer forever showing that I was thisclose to upping my status. However, the one big difference I noticed was when I had to contact Customer Service…

Screenshot 2020-01-10 at 16.07.39

With Iberia Plus Plata (Silver) the best part is that you can check in at the business class counter (whether you’re traveling business or not), priority boarding (key if you don’t want a small suitcase to get involuntarily checked-in when there’s no overhead space left), ¡ and you can check in an extra bag for free, depending upon the flights. With the upgrade to Oro (which is not easy to get there as you need to have either a ton of flights or a number of business-class flights earning points), the only additional real tangible benefit is that you can use the VIP lounges at the airports.

The big difference was with the Customer Service when I called the Customer care line. Normally I tried to avoid as much as possible calling any Customer Service number here in Spain. Usually they don’t care and aren’t very friendly (not to generalize of course, but this has sadly been my experience). The best is being hung up on, which has happened to me several times, and Iberia is not out of the blame game here as they have hung up on me in the past. The reason I called was to look into booking a ticket with points (avios) and with kids – impossible to do this online. Granted I had done this in the past, but I remembered it was a painful process, speaking to different people, receiving different information, etc.

So I called the Iberia Plus Oro dedicated Customer Service number (different than the standard one). The woman who helped me out was very nice and efficient throughout the process. Of course the call didn’t come without complications – just as the tickets were being issued there was a technical problem, and it wasn’t possible for her to finalize the transaction. She said not to worry, she would complete this as soon as the system was back up, and then I would receive the emails. Granted to say I was more than skeptic. To reassure me she said she would call me once everything was finalized so that I would know it was all set. Right!

Screenshot 2020-01-10 at 16.10.14

Much to my disbelief, about a half hour later (after I received the confirmation emails) I got a call from the Iberia lady just to let me know that everything had gone through and was all set, saying she wanted to call just because she had agreed to do so. And to think in the past I had been hung up on by the normal Iberia Customer service people.

Even just this past summer when Iberia broke my baby stroller on a flight home from Boston, I was cursing them after their lack of help on the phone to deal with this (that’s another story in itself).

My learnings: 1. Iberia Plus Oro is great for the Customer Service and fringe benefits, although overall not significantly different than the Silver level 2. It makes me wonder how there can be such a difference between “normal” Customer service and that for elite customers. It seems to me like Iberia should be striving to improve their overall experience, not just for one level.

I was in the US for a month for summer holidays. Here are a few reflections.

Leave a reply

I love the US. How can I not? I was born and raised there and it was my life for 26 years. I also love Spain. The more time I’ve lived in Spain the more I’ve become used to the Spanish way of living… and actually become Spanish. It’s been 13 years and the most recent years of my life.

It was great to be home with family in the US, which was the main objective, and also to have my kids immersed in English for a whole month. After having spent such an extended time there, there  are some things that stood out out in my mind that I wanted to share:

  • Where do kids in the US play? I have no shame in admitting that many times we googled “playgrounds” to see if there were any decent public play areas near where we were staying as we moved around. Turns out this isn’t an easy feat. In Madrid there are so many around where we live in the suburbs that you could probably go to a different, nice playground every day for a month without repeating.  Also where we live in Majadahonda we have a large, shared pool in our apartment complex that all the kids go to every day during the summer – no invite required. We found some good parks that we visited near Boston, but they required driving 20+ minutes to get there and there weren’t too many kids. This just made me wonder “what did I do as a kid?” I remember playing out in the street in my neighborhood, but I think the big thing is the US is going to friends’ houses and having your kids play with theirs with playdates. There’s nothing wrong with this, but the plus of having great public playgrounds is that you don’t have to be social with other adults for your kids to have fun. I don’t exactly consider myself an introvert, but it’s nice to just be able to go to a big public park where no one knows you and let your kids run around and make friends or not. If they hit someone or steal a toy the consequences won’t be personal.

Park in Las Rozas, Madrid

Here are some pictures of some typical parks in the outskirts of Madrid.

  • Drive thrus. Surprisingly (and fortunately) this hasn’t yet made its way to Spain in the same magnitude as in the US. I had forgotten how prevalent drive throughs are in the US. This first hit me one day with my sister as we pulled into Dunkin Donuts. I told her I’d be out in a second to which she replied, “but we’ll just go through the Drive Thru”. Honestly it hadn’t even occurred to me. The coffee shop, the banks, the pharmacy, the car wash – you name it. Life made easy, but is it too easy?
  • Customer service can suck in the US as well. As you may now if you’ve read my blog, Customer Service/Customer Experience is something that is important to me. I’ve written many posts about not-so-great customer experiences here in Spain, as this is still something that has a long way to go. However, I discovered during our trip that it’s not all roses in the US either. We had a wonderful experience with Rentalcars.com (Hertz being the provider for a rental car) in which we were given a pick up location for the car that no longer exists. The hotel where we went to get the car no longer has a Hertz office there. When I contacted the Hertz office they were about to close in 20 minutes and were of absolutely no help. To make a long story short they ended up hanging up on me after saying they wouldn’t do anything and left us with no way to get back home and without a rental car. The best is that Rentalcars.com had already charged us for the entire two week rental. Note: do not use Rentalcars.com! The best thing is definitely to go directly with the company, even if you end up spending a little bit more. In the end we had to pay for an uber back to our house and then having to deal with Rentalcars.com on the phone so they could refund the payment they’d already received. Then we had to reserve a new car…
  • Coffee. Once you get used to the European coffee it’s hard to go back. Punto.

Overall it was a great trip home, but I still don’t see myself moving back to the US any time soon. I don’t think I would have a full month of vacation to be writing a blog like this, to start…

 

 

My Abusive Relationship with Iberia

Leave a reply

I’ve written how my experience moving to a foreign country with a basic level of the language was humbling and made me more accepting of circumstances (and people) and more relaxed.

However, there is one thing that can always manage to make my blood boil. No matter how long I’ve been abroad I just cannot tolerate bad customer experience. There still exists a strong mentality, at least here in Spain, that the customer is wrong. After having worked for several years in the Customer Experience research team at Forrester Research (https://www.forrester.com/Customer-Experience) back in Boston and having researched and documented the high correlation between positive CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE, consumer loyalty and positive business impact ($$), it still boggles me how there can exist this mentality and bad treatment of customers. Maybe there are still some businesses or sectors where consumers don’t have much of a choice, but with the way the world is changing so rapidly with digitalization, AI, paradigm breakers in existing sectors (think Uber, Amazon, Amazon Go, …) I don’t think this mentality will work forever.

Iberia and I have an abusive relationship. Sometimes I like being close to him to get to the end result (get from Madrid to Boston and vice versa without having to go through a layover). However, there are other times when I can’t even stand looking at him, when he disrespects me and even hangs up on me.

Screenshot 2019-07-03 at 22.55.26

Screenshot 2019-07-03 at 22.55.53

Let’s be honest; people fly to get from one point to another. I’m not looking for miracles. However, I do expect to be treated with respect, especially when there are loyalty programs involved. So, what happened the other day? Well, it goes back to 6 months ago when I tried to use my frequent flyer “avios” to purchase tickets for Boston for the summer. I figured I had enough points that I could buy my ticket and one of my child’s. As it turns out it’s almost impossible to use avios to buy tickets during high travel season. Eight months prior to the planned travel dates there was only 1 seat available that could be purchase with avios (my husband called 5 minutes afer I did and there were no longer avios seats available). In the end I purchased my seat with avios and had to pay almost 200 euros in taxes. Makes you wonder to what point it’s really worth the avios…

For my two kids (ages 5 and 2) it was impossible to apply any of my avios. I purchased their tickets for almost 2000 euros, but in order to get assigned seats for them to be near me we’d have to pay another 200 euros. I said I think it would be their mistake to try to put a 2 year old screaming for his mom in a different aisle, but I think I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it in a few weeks. I’m pretty sure someone will prefer to switch with me if Iberia won’t give us seats together than suffer 8 hours of screaming…

On top of the kids’ tickets I also purchased some sort of travel insurance that wasn’t very clear at all over the phone but made to seem as though it was an essential part of the purchase. Next thing I know I had an extra 108 euro charge on my card. When I called a few days later to ask for more information about the insurance I had purchased I was told I’d receive it via email (the same email through which I received the tickets). Nothing came. Honestly out of pure laziness of having to call Iberia again and wait on hold I put it off for months.

The other day I called Iberia to ask about the insurance policy I had semi-consciously purchased. They confirmed that I had purchased a policy for both of my children with Allianz insurance, but to receive information about the coverage I would have to speak directly with Allianz. I asked what information I would need to provide to Allianz when calling (I’ve had enough experience with being bounced back and forth) and was told that with my ticket locator number that would be enough.

Next step- I called Allianz. Not surprisingly they were unable to find my information, policy, etc. They said that likely Iberia had made a mistake and that unless I had a separate payment on my account for the insurance that it was never purchased. They were unable to look up any more information with my name or personal data; I even tried repeating my email twice (another thing I’ve had enough experience with is people not understanding me on the phone with my accent) spelling out each letter like “M as in Madrid, A as in Alemania…” Nothing.

Screenshot 2019-07-03 at 22.56.09

Their solution: send an email to a generic Allianz sales email with a proof of payment from my bank account from January. That’s when I hit the table (literally) and tried to politely express my anger at their complete lack of efficiency as I had a ticket right in front of me. As I saw I was getting nowhere the conversation ended. I immediately found the information and sent an email titled “URGENT” with the information they requested. To my surprise they answered me within a couple of hours with the information I had requested and the full policy coverage. I have to say I was impressed with this part of the service, but was it really worth it for Iberia to put me through this hassle? Talk about making things not easy for the customer.

As it turns out, despite having repeated my email address twice and having the agent repeat it back to me, he somehow had managed to completely butcher it with about 3 letters and a period missing.

So, I’ll fly with Iberia in a few weeks, and maybe things will be smooth between us for a while, but at some point we’ll hit a bump and it will go back to rocky. For now I’m not going to end our relationship as I’m still getting the final results I’m looking for, but once something more attractive comes along with less hassle (and baggage) I will be first in line. My next challenge: try to understand the insurance policy.

To be continued…

Can airlines really deliver good experiences? Listen up Iberia Customer Experience!

Leave a reply

Iberia, I know here in Spain you actually have a Customer Experience director (not a common job title in this country), so, read on…

Let’s face it – most airlines are pretty similar. Unless you’re taking advantage of frequent flier miles, the reason you pick one over the other is price, plain and simple. In my case, the only reason I might pick Iberia is because they have direct flights to Boston from Madrid, not because the service is great – or even that good. I think we’ve just resigned ourselves to the fact that flying is what it is – a means to get from one place to another and something that you have to put up with. (maybe you’ve seen one of my earlier airline experience posts).

So, is it possible to create a good experience?

Yes! I think it is possible to break old thinking and barriers and create something new with flying. Take a look at this article about a design consultancy’s idea “Poppi” for reinventing the airline experience:

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/10/07/design/airline-future-uber-airbnb/index.html

For example, instead of having customers be upset and complain for being stuck in a bad middle seat, why not let those who want a free gift choose  to go with that seat? Why not make the luggage experience more hassle-free? Why not think of ways to make the waiting time at the gate be better?  Poppi might not be a reality yet, but I hope it follows in Uber’s footsteps to shake things up.

Domino's Pizza logo

Domino’s Pizza Delivers Customer Experience

Leave a reply

It’s been a while since I’ve written with the summer shutdown and vacation (https://spanishized.com/2015/03/31/the-summer-slowdown-is-on-the-way/). But now I’m back from the summer hiatus and happy to have a new Customer Experience story to share. And it’s an unexpected one this time.

I’ll be honest; I’m not a big fan of pizza. Well, at least not the Domino’s or Telepizza fast food type. Just seeing the newly-advertised Nacho Pizza from Telepizza for example makes me a bit uncomfortable (who thinks of these things?!)

Telepizza Nacho Pizza

However, when I was in Italy recently I was quite happy to order an Italian pizza without thinking twice. In any case, whether or not I like it here I have to admit that I was impressed with Domino’s recently when we ordered a pizza with some friends. Who would’ve thought Domino’s would be one of the companies making the move toward improving its customer experiences here in Spain…

Domino's Pizza logo

Usually, after ordering a pizza online, Domino’s delivery is quick and efficient. To date we haven’t had any real issues. The other day the pizza arrived as ordered, but it was about a half hour late and COA (cold on arrival). It was one of those “well, it is what it is” moments without giving it much thought.

The next day my husband received a phone call from Domino’s asking how his experience had been: the delivery time, if the pizza arrived in a “good condition”, if it was hot etc. When he mentioned that it was more or less ok but that the pizza had arrived cold, they apologized and said the next pizza would be free.

Good job Domino’s for unexpectedly reaching out to your customers and improving your customer experience! I still don’t like fast food pizza, but the next time someone wants one I’d definitely call Domino’s first.

Carrefour’s Scan & Go Scanners – Is the purchase experience really better?

4 Replies

Every so often my husband and I have a similar conversation where my American roots come out in full force as I get annoyed at the workings (or lack thereof) of something here, and he gets frustrated, telling me that I’m making a big deal out of nothing. This is when I have to tell myself that it’s just not the same over here. And I wonder, “Am I really just overreacting and being too American?” The last time this happened was the other day at Carrefour. That’s right; at the supermarket. It actually wasn’t the first time that we’ve had the same discussion at the check out…

About five years ago Carrefour launched its touch screen “Scan & Go” scanners in Spain. As a loyalty card member you can pick up one of these nifty devices when you enter the hypermarket and scan your purchases along the way as you go. What’s the point? Well, as Carrefour promotes with its “innovation designed to make customers’ lives easier”, it seems there are several benefits:

Carrefour Scan & Go scanner

1. Time saver. After finishing your shopping you don’t have to wait in the long check-out lines; you go directly to the special “Scan & Go” machines where you either get a green light which lets you directly leave after paying and expresses Carrefour’s confidence in you as a customer. Or you can be chosen as a random check where an employee supposedly has to scan a few items in your cart just to make a double check, and then you’ll be on your merry way. I say “supposedly” as this is important to my story.

2. More control for the customer. you scan your own products and easily see your total purchase amount as you go. If you need to add or delete an item, no problem. also, if there’s a special offer the little machine will tell you so.

3. More fun shopping experience. As you have more control and do the scanning yourself, the experience is more enjoyable and in your hands.

4. Carrefour shows its trust.  By putting the checkout experience in the customer’s hands, Carrefour is saying that it trusts the customer and trusts that you really have scanned everything that you’ve put in your cart. GENERALLY.

So, what made my American temper shine through? This was probably the fourth of fifth time that we had finished a big shopping trip, with the cart overflowing, and encountered a “situation” at the Scan & Go checkout station. When the flashing orange light above the stand started blinking I thought, “Great, here we go again.” Now I understand that sometimes just to maintain Quality Control employees need to do a quick double check and rescan some items to verify the order. What I cannot understand is having an employee take out each and every item that we have in our cart to rescan everything again. And, of course, the end result is only to discover that no, we did not steal anything. After a few minutes when I realize that they are actually going to completely disorganize the cart and take out each item to scan again, my attitude comes out. At this point I begin my usual rantings about the lack of efficiency, what’s the point of having a scanner, why don’t they look for real thieves, etc. etc. Really, I might as well be wearing a shirt that screams “USA” to go along with my huffing and puffing.

To Carrefour: great idea to improve the experience, but bad execution when you are telling loyal customers that you don’t trust them at the end of their shopping experience. Now, trust me, I understand that robbery is a problem in Spain. However, if Carrefour consciously made the decision to implement a system such as this in its stores, then they have to show their customers they trust them. If not, instead of improving the purchase experience they are actually running the risk of turning loyal customers away and creating unnecessary frustration.

What do you think? Does Carrefour make the purchase experience better? Should this kind of system exist here in Spain? Does it work for you?

p.s. Interesting article from five years ago about Carrefour’s decision to launch Scan & go: https://socialmediaexperience.wordpress.com/2010/06/28/carrefour-scan-go-una-innovacion-de-la-experiencia-del-cliente/