I made a mistake this past weekend and tried to buy a desk lamp. The mistake wasn’t buying one — I have a little table I like to work at, and it needs a small lamp — but buying one in person, at a store, with other people.
“Areyouamemberofourspecialrewardsclubthatgivesyoudiscountsonallpurchaseswejustneedyouremailandphonenumber,” the person helping me check out mumbled in an indifferent and lethargic tone of voice. I didn’t really understand the question and made my first major tactical error.
“I’m sorry, what?” I asked.
“Areyouamemberofourspecialrewardsclubthatgivesyoudiscountsonallpurchaseswejustneedyouremailandphonenumber,” the person mumbled again, with the same lifeless delivery.
I still didn’t get it. But for some reason, I ignored the alarm klaxon going off inside my head — Danger! Do not engage! Decline whatever it is and move on! — and I ended up saying something like, “Special rewards what?” As if I really wanted to know. I am as baffled by my actions as I suspect you are, but for some reason, I persisted.
The person helping me looked miserable and clearly didn’t want to go through it once more. So the words came out again, this time slower and with more space and breath between the consonants. It looked like an exhausting and dispiriting speech the company forced its employees to make to all customers, even ones who came in just to buy a $10 desk lamp and never ever return.
When the speech was done, I declined politely. “No thanks,” I said. “Not today.” And I got a relieved sigh in return, tapped my phone on the spot where you’re supposed to tap it, after tapping it where you’re not supposed to tap it a few times, and heard the chime that says, We got your money! And off I went with my desk lamp.
“It probably came from some awful webinar they make the employees watch,” a friend of mine said later when I told him about the ordeal. “They make them memorize all sorts of pitches to try to entice the customer into joining some rewards deal. And the employees have to deliver the pitch exactly as it’s written for legal reasons. So that’s why you get that robotic delivery.”
“How do you know so much about it?” I asked. My friend is a video editor, not a retail expert.
“My company makes those training videos,” he told me. “I spend a lot of my time trying to keep them interesting.”
I didn’t want any trouble, so I didn’t tell him that he had utterly failed. But later, I read that large retailers are trying everything to increase their margins and store traffic — Amazon has taken a big bite out of their addressable market — which is why they train their employees to push sign-up schemes and coupon clubs relentlessly. A customer they know better, goes the thinking, is a customer they can serve better. Which may be true, but I’d suggest paying their employees a little more, and giving them acting lessons, so they can really sell with gusto. A little extra in the pay packet might turn “Areyouamemberofourspecialrewardsclubthatgivesyoudiscountsonallpurchaseswejustneedyouremailandphonenumber…” into an electric and enthusiastic “Are you a member of our special rewards club that gives you discounts! On all purchases! We just need your email and phone number!”
I’d like to see Amazon try that.
Actually, Amazon does try that. If you’re unlucky enough to have an Amazon Echo in your house, you’ve probably noticed that it lights up almost daily, ready to remind you that there’s a special deal on some product you bought once or a new book by an author you once glancingly searched. And because it’s the same light that turns on to indicate the information you might actually want to know, such as, for instance, that a package is about to be delivered, you only find out that the device is notifying you to sell you something midway through the pitch. If you’re me, you end up shouting profanity at the stupid thing until you’re fed up with it and toss it into the garbage, as I did a few months ago.
Which is why I found myself in a store, in a three-dimensional space, buying a desk lamp that I could have bought more easily on Amazon. And now that I think about it, if I have to hear a pitch, I guess I’d prefer to get it from a robotic store employee instead of an actual robot. At least the store employee knows it’s a giant time waster for both of us.
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Rob Long is a television writer and producer, including as a screenwriter and executive producer on Cheers, and he is the co-founder of Ricochet.com.