Why We Buy (23 page)

I
n stores, as in life, there are good times and there are bad times. Good times—meaning any time a customer is shopping—you want to stretch. Bad times you want to bend.

Bad times are whenever the customer is made to wait. Understandably, they don't like it, but as reasonable beings, they'll do it—up to a point. Beyond that, though, comes trouble. In study after study, we've seen that the single most important factor in determining a shopper's opinion of the service he or she receives is waiting time. If they think the wait wasn't too bad, they feel as though they were treated capably and well. If the wait went on too long, they feel as though the service was poor and inept. Quite simply, a short wait enhances the entire shopping experience and a long one poisons it.

But it's possible to “bend” waiting time—to alter how shoppers perceive it. You can even turn bad times into good times.

First, a word about the whole issue of time and perception. There's the watch on your wrist, which is probably a highly accurate instrument, but there's an even more important clock inside your head. That
mental timepiece is highly susceptible to outside influences, and yet it counts more than any Rolex. We've interviewed lots of shoppers on the subject and have found this interesting result: When people wait up to about a minute and a half, their sense of how much time has elapsed is fairly accurate. Anything over ninety or so seconds, however, and their sense of time distorts—if you ask how long they've been waiting, their honest answer will usually be a very exaggerated one. If they've waited two minutes, they'll say it's been three or four. In the shopper's mind, the waiting period goes from being a transitional pause in a larger process (purchasing goods, say) to being a full-fledged activity of its own. That's when time becomes very bad. Time is a cruel master in the world of shopping. Taking care of a customer in two minutes is a success; taking care of a customer in three minutes is a failure.

The obvious appeal of drive-thru shopping (or banking, or dining) is in its convenience and efficiency—you save yourself the trouble of finding a parking spot, then parking, then getting out of your car and going inside and then having to do it all over again in reverse. (One of our favorite pieces of videotape shows a bank drive-thru in Whittier, California, where the cars in line were joined by one time-stressed man on foot.) But even if going to the drive-thru didn't move things faster, the comfort of waiting in your own car, sitting in a comfortable seat with the CD player and heater or air conditioner on, would without question make it
feel
faster.

Most of this matter of time centers on the cashier area, when shoppers are standing in line to pay, or to see a teller, or to order a meal. And it's there that measures can be taken to bend waiting time. Such as:

Interaction, human or otherwise:
The time a shopper spends waiting after an employee has initiated contact actually goes faster than time spent waiting before that interaction takes place, our studies have shown. Having an employee simply acknowledge that the shopper is waiting—and maybe offer some plausible explanation—automatically relieves time anxiety, especially when it comes early in the wait. I once visited a big chain drugstore where the manager clearly loved customer contact. When the checkout lines got a little too long he'd leave his
office and work the front of the store like some combination expediter–standup comic. His presence seemed to make the cashiers move a little faster, and he was entertaining, too. If, during busy times, I had a choice between deploying three cashiers or two cashiers and a line manager, I'd go with the latter. The line manager can serve as a kind of precashier—he or she can gently suggest to shoppers that they have their orders ready or can offer to answer any questions the customers may have, thereby shortening both the perceived and the actual wait. This can be a great way to train even your customers to be more efficient.

Another related way to bend time is to tell shoppers their wait will be finite and controlled rather than open-ended and subject to the vagaries of fate and chance. Some banks do this by posting an electronic sign that announces how many minutes the wait for a teller should last. These signs are never accurate, but that's OK—just being told that your patience must last for only two minutes makes the four minutes you actually wait go faster. I recently called a computer manufacturer's telephone technical help hotline. A recorded voice informed me that my wait for a human being would last “an estimated one to five minutes.” Which is a hell of a long span, when you think about it, but they were placating my time anxiety while playing it safe, a smart move.

Orderliness:
European shoppers don't seem to mind queuing up in a great, heaving mass of humanity, but Americans like their lines single-file, crisp and fair. Making people guess about where to stand frustrates them. Allowing chaos to reign causes anxiety. If customers see that they're being helped in the exact order they arrived, they relax, and the time spent waiting seems shorter. This is the secret to bending time: get rid of the uncertainty and you cut the perceived wait.

The organization of cashier lines is still one of the great ongoing quandaries in the world of shopping. Without question, the fastest, most equitable system places customers in a single checkout line. This way guarantees that shoppers are taken in the order they arrive, and there's no angst about whether they've chosen the swiftest line. There's just one problem: You will sometimes have one
very
long line—a worrisome sight for a shopper in a hurry. Somehow, three lines of five customers each
promise less of an ordeal than a single line of fifteen people. It's irrational but true, and such is the difference between perception and reality.

Just as important is the fact that when the cashier is positioned near the front door, a single long line drives incoming customers away. A common sight in our work is the shopper who enters a store (or merely peers in through a window), sees a long line at the checkout, takes that as a sign that the entire place is mobbed, turns on a dime and exits. In fact, the store may be empty past that checkout line, but who can tell? (And this, as we say elsewhere in these pages, is a good argument for not positioning cashiers within sight of the outside world.)

Two major American merchants changed their line system in the hope of making it more efficient and less daunting: Best Buy, the consumer electronics chain, and Whole Foods, the grocery store chain. Best Buy runs you through a maze where the walls are high enough so you have no idea as you enter how many people may be waiting in front of you, and those walls are merchandised with batteries, cheap video games and office and computer supplies. It works remarkably well. Whole Foods has been rolling out their new queuing system, a series of minilines with flat-screen televisions above them indicating which numbered cash/wrap the first person in each line should go to. What's good about this system is you're breaking up a big, snaky, short-tempered line. And it's clear that a technological system is overseeing the whole thing. With the knowledge that someone is minding the store, and maybe even paying attention, customers' anxiety levels drop off. Is it a terrific system? No, but it's a system, and an obvious improvement over the old chaos.

Companionship:
The wait seems shorter if you've got someone to talk to, no surprise. A store can't do much about that, except to recognize that the lone waiters are the ones who need employee contact most.

Diversion:
Almost anything will suffice. One bank we studied used a TV tuned to soap operas to entertain the line—a bad idea, we thought, because to enjoy a soap you need to see the entire half hour. A much better solution was used by another bank, in California, where a big-screen TV played old Keystone Kops shorts during the afternoon, when
most customers were retirees. Everybody's considering video systems these days, but some low-tech entertainments work just as well. Many food stores serve free samples, a good time-killer that promotes new products. Positioning racks of impulse items so they can be shopped from the cashier line is smart merchandising, but it's also good time-bending. Also keep in mind that the first person in line doesn't require much diversion—he or she is in the on-deck circle, just waiting for the sign that they're up. Merchandising materials, signage, shoppable racks and anything else should be positioned for the second person in line and back.

The racks of sleazy tabloids at the supermarket checkout are a great use of diverting merchandise, allowing you to absorb all the trashy news you need without having to watch Jerry Springer. Another popular form of shopper diversion is, believe it or not, signage. Customers perceive waiting time as shorter if there are signs to read, our research shows. In fact, smart retailers view waiting time as a kind of intangible asset—it's one of the few opportunities when you have your customers standing in one spot, facing in one direction, with nothing much else to do. This is when bad times can be turned into good times: Waiting may be a necessary evil, but you can use it to communicate some message and, at the same time, shorten how shoppers perceive it.

Even away from the cashiers, waiting time is a problem in stores today. Retailers typically cut costs by cutting back on labor, which means that shoppers now spend more time than ever searching for a clerk who can answer a question. This is a particularly deadly form of waiting time; we've watched countless shoppers dart back and forth in stores looking for help or directions. After they've wandered in vain for a minute or so, you can see the steam coming out of their ears. Male shoppers are particularly vulnerable to this—if they can't get an answer fast, they give up and go home (or to another store). We studied a department store that had just made a change in staffing policy: Instead of keeping cashiers stationed throughout the place, in the various departments, the registers were consolidated in front. (
Fewer
registers, naturally.) As a result, waiting time in line instantly became quite a bit longer. Plus, it suddenly was very hard to find an employee on the sales floor.
Plus,
the
mob of impatient-looking shoppers lined up to pay just inside the front door gave entering customers the impression that the store was packed. In all, saving on a few salaries created a lot of expensive new disadvantages to overcome.

This equation pops up all the time in retailing today: At what point does saving money on labor end up costing money in shopper frustration? Banks in particular are vulnerable. They tend to hire part-timers for minimum wage, meaning they're not getting workers with seasoned math or people skills. As a result, wait time increases. At some point, customer dread will take its toll. We studied two businesses—a bank and an electronics store—that, mainly for security reasons, used a single cash drawer. At the bank, tellers had to run back and forth from their windows to the drawer for even the simplest transactions. At the store, shoppers beheld the spectacle of salesclerks jostling each other out of the way to get at the register. Neither setup did much for consumer confidence, and the effect on waiting time was just what you'd expect.

We've studied quite a few stores where time-consuming antishoplifting policies ended up costing sales, we felt sure. In each example, the merchandise was small in size but not inexpensive: prestige perfumes in one case; computer printer ink cartridges in another; video game players in a third. All three stores decided to display the items in locked glass cases, meaning that shoppers had to make their selection without being able to touch their choice or see it up close. That alone guarantees that purchasers are being discouraged. Shoppers then had to track down an employee, praying they had found one who was permitted to carry the magic key in question. In all those instances, we watched customers search in vain for help, then give up on the purchase altogether. Did fewer thefts make up for the loss in sales? Probably not.

There's no question that shrinkage issues (meaning products that can't be accounted for) are serious. But they tend to be focused in select stores, rather than in all stores. If you're a chain like Staples you'll have a few with huge shrinkage problems, others with minor and many with none. Shrinkage comes in three forms: It can be a product that walks out the back door (employee theft); a product that's stolen by pros whose intent when they woke up that day was to rip you off; and theft
by amateurs, who are writing their own discount programs. Wal-Mart claims a less than 1 percent shrink rate. But that can add up to a lot of money where a chain that enormous is concerned.

So the stores instituted security everywhere. On one hand, you have the little old lady perched at the entrance, cheerily greeting customers, on the assumption that you're less likely to swipe a sweater or a pair of barbells if someone has acknowledged your existence. Another deterrent some stores use is to blare over the store loudspeakers something like “Security to aisle six!” even though the store probably doesn't have a manned security system in place. The stores with the biggest ongoing shrinkage problems need to bring in professionals.

We once worked for a drugstore chain in South Carolina with a corporate return policy that was the very definition of generosity: They would refund the price of any return, no questions asked. While I was there, the manager took me to a section of the store that sold hair products and equipment for women. “This is the most expensive hair dryer I sell,” he told me, pointing to a swanky multivolt model. “I've taken four of them back as returns in the past month.” He paused dramatically. “Problem is, in the past month, I haven't sold a single one.”

Obviously, some devious souls had been stealing the same hair dryer over and over again, then returning it for cash. Unfortunately, the manager was handcuffed by the company fiat: “We accept all returns—no questions asked.”