CASUAL Male Group’s Rochester Big and Tall chain has had my custom for 20 years. As my girth crept upwards, the US firm’s selection is hard to duplicate.

Their hallmark is providing exceptional one-to-one in-store service through dedicated and knowledgeable men’s fashion experts.

The online business though falls short because web business is often the poor relation of many a retail organisation and, like many, they cannot determine if items are in stock as various systems process orders differently.

Living abroad the last decade, I’ve become reliant on their online sales group since few EU merchants handle, as the Singaporean stalls merchant so indelicately yelled, “I have King Kong size!”

Which although direct, indeed true and convulsed me at the time with laughter, failed to win my heart or the sale, but I digress.

Every year, an email announces the big year-end sale and their system again accepted payment and confirmed my online order for merchandise… no longer in stock.

While some feel the answer is to never make a service mistake, the real answer is, how does your business recover when one is made?

Mistakes happen. So how do you empower your people to resolve them because the smile, shrug, policy recitation and blank stare, “what do you want me to do?” expression is not any more acceptable than spending time pointing internal fingers (your choice of digit) by way of explanation to me as the customer?

Like most businessmen circa 1995, I owned two types of clothing, dress suits with requisite neckties/nooses and my everyday knockabout rags.

The dotcom era brought casual Fridays so we had to buy entire smart casual wardrobes to dress down in style.

As an old girlfriend said to a salesman, “his taste is in his mouth”. It was learn to shop sensibly or die trying.

I filled my online Rochester cart and 36-hours later received an email saying all items were not available, so my order was cancelled.

I dialled the service department and reached supervisor Holly Roe.

She began by saying, “Oh, I’m so glad you called back. I had a bad phone number and was about to send an email.”

I gently released one set of my fingernails embedded angrily in the ceiling – She wanted to call me?

Holly said, “I’m very sorry, it must be so frustrating, please accept my apologies. Here is what I think we should do but I wanted to first get your thoughts.”

The other set of fingernails retracted and I dropped clumsily into my desk chair. I explained this seems an annual occurrence, why take my money if there is no merchandise?

“I don’t know but I’m going to find out for you. It sounds as though refunding your money is not the best option, so I will personally search the warehouse to find similar items, then you can then tell me how to proceed.

“Also we’ll refund the $36 shipping (£19) and when all is to your satisfaction, I will place an additional $50 (£27) on your credit card for the inconvenience.” (Deafening silence, followed by my meek and quiet “OK”.)

Sir Terry Tesco, are you listening?

I spend £12,000 annually with you. Your online group do a good job at swift refunds which do not solve my missing merchandise problem, but I always have to take the first step and pay to call you! We’ll devote another column to in-store treatment.

I am now putty in this woman’s hands.

Suddenly (insert your choice of horror movie theme music) duty and paperwork errors between UPS, US and UK delay my order six weeks. Have no fear, Holly is here.

With the patience of Job’s wife she manoeuvres the international morass, avoids diplomatic incident and all is resolved, but not before giving me a further refund of excess duties of £36 and browbeating UPS into refunding my £29 cheque and she even found and had an over-long pair of pants hemmed two inches to fit me!

Many would argue my order lost money for Rochester, something many a supervisor almost anywhere would be browbeaten over. Holly understood that over the lifetime of a 20-year relationship, I’ve spent thousands there. Losing $160 (£82) by fixing this was an investment in keeping a long-standing relationship thriving. She’s been well trained to recover situations.

So what would you do? Are your people empowered or procedure-bound when it comes to helping a customer? What recovery system do you have in place?

The market, especially in tough times, will demand you address this.

Why? Regardless of whether I live in Wales or Washington, there’s an Asda opening next month, Waitrose began delivering recently to my neighbourhood and we have choices.

We just need to start exercising them.

(This story originally appeared in The Western Mail)

Rochester Part Deux

The story ended just the other day with UPS again failing to deliver (yes, I know, a horrible pun) on their promise to refund the duty payment because, “they decided you are not entitled to the refund check as originally stated by them on 1/28/08.”

And they decided also neither to tell their customer (Casual Male Group) nor me.

This is another unpleasant aspect of the slippery slide of customer service. I can use what ever rule book I choose to, especially to say no, not tell anyone involved and then hide behind the rule book a month later without ever needing to offer either an apology to a very large customer or an excuse because it’s our policy ?!?!???

Holly’s response, “I have issued you a credit this morning of $50.00 USD. I did not want you waiting any longer for money that is rightfully due you. I will address this issue with UPS. I hope this is an acceptable resolution for you.”

Now, perhaps you understand why this company leads my hit parade.

It’s not just Holly, below is a letter from their CEO David Levin. Theirs is a top-down commitment to service.