Who’s to Blame for Bad Customer Service?

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0:32Sheena Butler-Young: This episode is brought to you by Macy's. I love seeing what comes through each season, but keeping up with every new trend can honestly be a lot. So, I like the idea of treating the new season less like a complete wardrobe reset and more like a cheat sheet for a few things you might want to try. For autumn, it's all about richer colours and textures. Think chocolate brown, deep greens, grey and stone, with suede coming through in everything from handbags and jackets to shoes and accessories. Dark indigo denim is also having a moment which is probably one of the easiest ways to make something you already wear all the time feel a little fresher.

1:10Sheena Butler-Young: Macy's brings all those trends together in one place so you can work out what exactly fits your own style rather than feeling like you need to follow everything.

1:29Sheena Butler-Young: Hello and welcome to The Debrief from the Business of Fashion, where each week we delve into our most popular BOF professional stories with the correspondents who created them. I'm senior correspondent Sheena Butler-Young.

1:45Sheena Butler-Young: American Idol winner Kelly Clarkson is no stranger to the spotlight, but recently the singer and talk show host went viral for something that had nothing to do with her music. Clarkson recently took to X to share an in-store experience that she said left her feeling like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. The singer said she was treated as though she couldn't afford a$15 ,000 mechanical bird she wanted to buy at a Brooklyn home goods store. The store disputes her account saying the bird wasn't actually for sale. But that incident struck a nerve, sparking a much bigger conversation about customer service, who gets treated well and who doesn't.

2:17Sheena Butler-Young: And it comes at a particularly tricky time for retailers, as shoppers demand better service while store employees face mounting pressures of their own. Joining me to discuss what's going wrong and what retailers can do about it are my colleagues Jessica Kwan and Kathleen Chen. Kat, Jessica, welcome to The Debrief. Great to be here, Sheena. Okay, so this story is bringing up a lot of familiar themes in retail, from store associate trainings and wages to bad management to entitled customers, all the things. Jessica, you've recently reported on this alongside yours truly. We wrote an article about why customer service is perpetually poor across retail.

2:55Sheena Butler-Young: And Kat, you as BOF's retail editor recently spearheaded our package on what makes a good independent retailer or all the amazing independent retailers in the world. Before we get into the big picture, I want to start with the shopping trip that got everyone talking. Jessica, why don't you tell us what stood out to you about that and what you learned in your reporting? At a high level, of course. Yeah, so my first instinct when I saw this story on X is just we all have this experience of walking into a store and you're scrutinized and made to feel like you don't belong there. And it just reminded me of how extremely dangerous it is to size people up and make these snap judgments about their spending power and their income.

3:38And, you know, these are situations in which you often see people who are marginalized bear the brunt of that scrutiny. You know, many people of color, often black and brown people, celebrities who have made complaints like this before in the past include Oprah and Cardi B and most recently LeBron James' wife Savannah. There's a reason there's this dedicated phrase, shopping while Black, that points to this phenomenon of, you know, Black customers being disproportionately scrutinized and surveilled. But, you know, it's unfortunate that this incident happened for Clarkson.

4:11Sheena Butler-Young: I'm glad you brought up that point because I think, I mean, when we talked about this in the newsroom this week, I think there was at least three or four stories right away. And I think all of us had mentioned an experience. So extremely common experience. I agree with you disproportionately impacting, I think, communities of color. Kat, I want to bring you in here because, you know, she describes this like pretty woman experience. And I sometimes feel like that is not a glitch in the system, but the system is working as designed, which is that a lot of retailers have as like a value proposition to make people feel like we're too cool to serve you.

4:47Sheena Butler-Young: This store is so elite that we're just going to, you know, treat you like you should be lucky to spend here. What's your thought on that? Does that attitude ever really help? And is it a real thing? So it apparently is a real thing. I was doing research about this just now. It's known as the snob effect. And there has been some studies done on when you enter a luxury, exclusive environment and you are treated with an air of indifference or condescension that you are more likely to spend. Now, I don't know how viable this data is. I haven't, you know, read the studies. I personally find that very hard to believe.

5:27But I just really want to backtrack a little bit and just say, you know, we don't know really what happened between Kelly Clarkson and this toy store in Brooklyn. But I think the reason why it's sort of so easy to side with Kelly on this one, not only because she's one of the greatest pop stars of all time, in my opinion, it's so easy to side with her because whether you're you're black white or Asian or or where you shop this bad retail customer service is just so salient and when I was editing your story it was I love that we had this data component that shows that customer service is an issue that's gotten worse in recent years and I think that's really worthy of noting but in terms of the snob effect um the you know the pretty woman effect whatever you want to call it I think that actually there has been some distance from that mentality with a lot of luxury uh luxury store settings like people are finding that you know it could have an impact on sales you know and so I don't think that a true luxury shopping environment should make anyone feel intimidated or condescended upon.

6:50And that I do think that it should be a rule of thumb that everyone gets offered a bottle of sparkly water in a luxury boutique the moment that they walk in.

7:01Sheena Butler-Young: No, I love that. And it's interesting. I'm glad that you pointed out that we shouldn't assume what happened. I thought it was fascinating. I interviewed Lisa Amlani, who is a like a lifelong retail merchant and she runs a consultancy and she thought she said something that I've also seen online which is like regardless of what even the store thought happened when a customer leaves feeling that way you almost always have a problem even if they're even if the customer is having a bad I don't know if I would go that far there's no way a customer could be wrong because we've seen abusive customers especially after the pandemic but I thought that was interesting and I kind of I'm inclined to agree with her that when you leave a store feeling like that, no one really wins.

7:40Sheena Butler-Young: Jessica, let's get into the reporting. The data that Kat mentioned, will you pull some data that showed that there are signs of deterioration, that yes, some of this existed for a while, but things are getting worse. Talk a little bit about some of the signals that store experience is actually getting a little worse. So, I mean, the market research from Forrester releases its annual customer experience index. And since 2021, we found that it fell for four consecutive years. And I think, you know, certainly social media has heightened scrutiny of customer service representatives and workers, especially now through these viral videos taken discreetly with smart glasses.

8:19But at the same time, anecdotally, at least, I do feel the problem has worsened. I think years ago, I used to feel like there were too many sales associates. And now when I'm in a store and I have a problem, I look around, I can't find any. And, you know, a lot of experts we found were saying customer service is deteriorating across the board, across, you know, mass market and luxury due to a host of new factors like poor employment conditions and therefore motivation, lack of training and deficient social skills.

8:48Sheena Butler-Young: Kat, have you heard things that help some of this? I think, Jessica, you inferred like maybe training is one thing that retailers can invest in. The other thing that I think comes up in luxury is the commission model. I feel like that helps and hurts. What's your take on, you know, ways that retailers are supposed to make this better and what works and what doesn't work? I am very pro commission and I am very pro salary. If you talk to some of the best boutiques out there that are really known for their service and Elise Walker comes to mind, their employees are salaried, full time employees with benefits, PTO, and they also earn a commission.

9:27And on top of that, once you become a store employee, you have this infrastructure that's set up where you can rise to the ranks, not only in terms of like going toward retail management, but going toward corporate, rising the ranks in corporate. And this is a story that we've heard in retail. You know, retail is supposed to be one of the last industries where this is possible, where you get in entry level and you rise the ranks. The CEO of Aritzia, she started at that company as famously as a sales associate. Right. And so I think that career development aspect is really interesting because at the end of the day, what creates good service when the employees feel like they have a stake in offering good service?

10:14Or rather, when they feel that they have a stake in the store and that a good service is going to serve the stake that they own or the stake that they can take ownership in. And, you know, I think this is the problem. This is it's very easy. you don't have to be a retail reporter to sort of make the like the connection that, well, of course, you know, service is really shitty when people are paid minimum wage, you know, where people really can't afford a living wage working this job, which isn't, you know, it's that's more of an issue with mass retailers. But I also sympathize with store operators.

10:56It's what I hear, you know, Now, anecdotally, even though the retail labor shortage has alleviated in recent years, what I hear when brands open stores in New York, that it's still incredibly difficult to staff them.

11:11Sheena Butler-Young: There's also, and I agree with you on commission, there's also a downside to that, right? Some of the screening that people do in stores, sales associates do, especially in the luxury end, is because they're sizing up who can make the biggest purchase. Should we expect that people do a little bit of sizing up? We mentioned, I think, offline, like restaurants. The same thing, if you're there at the bar, you're ordering one drink and you're babysitting it all night. Does the bartender feel incentivized to stay at your end of the bar or the end of the bar where they're ordering 10 rounds? That's a great question.

11:39And I think for a really skilled retail employee who possesses all these specific intangible abilities that you need to engender trust with the shopper, the scarcity mindset doesn't help. It's not if I help customer A who doesn't spend, I lose the profits from customer B. I mean, I'm very against the kind of profiling because, you know, as we spoke to earlier, marginalized people tend to bear the brunt of that. But I think if you are really good at your job and you work for commission, you're not going to see treating everyone with kindness and respect and dignity as a loss.

12:15Sheena Butler-Young: There's another interesting theme that came up in our reporting. And I'll ask both of you sort of to weigh in. But there's this argument that younger workers in particular, so Gen Z, the 18 year old, you know, college kid, whatever those that sort of profile of the usual. Sheena, Gen Zs are turning 30 now. I know. I did know that. I was referring to people that are not that are under 30, Gen Z and Gen Alpha. They're not incentivized around these jobs. The pipeline from store to corporate is not as strong as it's advertised to be. We have these prominent examples like Aritzia CEO Doug McMillan at Walmart 30 years ago.

12:55Sheena Butler-Young: We don't have a steady stream of those examples. But there is a theory that holds that young people in particular, Gen Z, that ushered in the quiet quitting era of the pandemic. In particular, they're not motivated for these jobs. Something that came up from one of the sources is that they actually have a different definition of what good customer service looks like. I don't know what that means. I don't know how Gen Z, what they think they should deliver, what people receive. Jessica, as our resident Gen Z expert, what evidence does your reporting find around young people having a different attitude towards customer service than their predecessors?

13:33I think there's something about the pandemic that, you know, it's no secret that it really hampered the social skills of a lot of young people who were supposed to have this interpersonal interaction, very pivotal times of their life in late high school or all through high school, early college. And I do think you see that reflected in the ways you go to a store. And I do think a lot of young people want to be left alone.

13:58Sheena Butler-Young: They don't answer their phones. Apparently you can't call them anymore. You can only text them. There's all kinds of, they're not stereotypes. There's like real reports around how Gen Z communicates too, or younger people that miss some of this. Some of these rituals that we experienced, me as a millennial experience in my early career. This is not to say they don't like to be pampered or they don't want their needs met when the needs arise. But I do think, you know, it's almost like instead of a retail worker being very servile, you see them as arguably in worse fashion, kind of a robot who's in the background.

14:34But I think we have this awareness that it feels a little obsequious when they come over and are very attentive and almost bothersome. I mean, it's not just in a retail setting, right? like you go to the club I don't know if I feel like I've shared this anecdote an anecdote a thousand times with you Sheena but like you go out and before the pandemic like the line for the bathroom would be so rambunctious and so communal and these days it's like it's really you know I mean I I'm eight months pregnant so I haven't been in this setting for a really long time but like In these other social settings, you feel that shift from openness and lightness and people wanting to be friends with one another to just a closed offness.

15:20And I would say that we can make fun of Gen Z all day long, but it's not just the social isolation that we experienced as a society during COVID. It didn't just affect Gen Z. It affected them disproportionately because they were still being socialized at that time of their lives. But I think it made everybody a little bit colder to one another. And I think I'm sure you guys have seen like the headlines of us living in a low trust society right now. It's a low trust society. And I think this is, you know, this is an interesting phenomenon because it goes both ways in the conversation about customer service.

16:02So maybe customer service is worse because of this low trust environment. But at the same time, maybe customer service is being perceived as worse, that we're just very prone to sort of other other people because of this low trust society. And so I think this idea that, you know, expectations around service and how we react to people, how we react to strangers and a lack of grace that we give other other strangers in society right now is is, you know, this bigger issue.

16:37Sheena Butler-Young: I a thousand percent agree. It feels like that was a little bit of a therapy session. Thank you. Thank you. I feel that low trust on both sides. We'll be back with more of The Debrief right after this.

16:52Sheena Butler-Young: This episode is brought to you by Macy's. I love seeing what comes through each season, but keeping up with every new trend can honestly be a lot. So, I like the idea of treating the new season less like a complete wardrobe reset and more like a cheat sheet for a few things you might want to try. For autumn, it's all about richer colours and textures. Think chocolate brown, deep greens, grey and stone, with suede coming through in everything from handbags and jackets to shoes and accessories. Dark indigo denim is also having a moment, which is probably one of the easiest ways to make something you already wear all the time feel a little fresher.

17:30Sheena Butler-Young: Macy's brings all those trends together in one place, so you can work out what exactly fits your own style, rather than feeling like you need to follow everything.

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18:18Sheena Butler-Young: I want to talk now about some of the solutions and I'll back into it a little bit because one of the things that I think comes up often is that in mass retail in particular but also in like some of those big large luxury conglomerates I have never sat across from a c-suite executive or an HR leader that's not like speaking in the most colorful beautiful terms about how our sales associates are the you know the lifeline of our business and we hire people that care about the customer and they serve the customer and they meet them where they are and then you can go into the same store that they're talking about like one of the stores the next day and the experience couldn't be more different so where do you think the breakdown happens in these larger companies so obviously kelly clarkson was at a small indie boutique but our store but where's the breakdown between what is espoused at the corporate level and what's actually happening at the stores where does that go awry?

19:09Kat? Yeah, I mean, I think it's just the sheer turnover of employees. You know, if an employee is at a store for on average, let's say five months, six months, it's really not enough time, even even if there is sufficient, thorough training, there's really not enough time to like soak up the culture of the brand and, you know, feel like you are a part of this, this environment. It goes back to what I was saying earlier about feeling like you have, you know, you have a stake in the store. Yeah. And I think at the same time, there's just, typically there isn't sufficient training. I remember when I was working in retail in high school, we had one, I worked for Clark's Bostonian, and then I worked for Adidas the next summer at the outlet mall that was in our town.

20:08But we had one, for both of those instances, we had one training and that was it, right? And I think what could be very helpful is having better training material and implementing training, making training into a social thing. I mean, one thing that we haven't talked about is like social cohesion within a retail team. Like, I think that could be a very effective tool to make your employees feel like they have a stake in the store because they're part of a team. Right. And so if there are training programs, training initiatives around that idea, I think that would be very helpful. But typically, there's not a lot of thought that goes into like, we're going to go, like the hurdle right now is to staff the store.

20:57We finally staff it. It was difficult. Okay, great. We're up and running. And like, that's sort of it. Right. And I think, yeah, I think it's tricky. I think this notion of improving customer service is just really abstract and really hard to tackle for retailers. Yeah. And if I were to just jump on that, speaking to the precise point where the idealistic rhetoric makes a break from the actual results, I think a lot of companies, especially the publicly traded ones that are racing against the earning cycle, are really short-sighted in their goals. That's why they understaff the stores and don't pay retail workers a living wage with health benefits.

21:43And that's how you end up with high turnover and low customer attention. And I think you can't have your cake and eat it too. In the long run, it is profitable to create a work environment in which your staff want to stay. And when they feel cared for, they're going to care for the customers.

22:03Sheena Butler-Young: Yeah, I think I heard it this week at a retail event that, you know, for too long, store associates have been treated like a cost line. Like that's just some, we need to cut costs. And like we're paying all these people to be in a store rather than, you know, part of the experience. And also like just in the age of AI, the human part of it, people, I think, I hope, want more human connections. We're a little bit fatigued at digital. So we're talking, we talked a lot about the mass and the larger retailers, the independent retailers, which I think that was the huge theme of your package. Kat, I think sometimes they get a reputation for having the sit and fit service.

22:39Sheena Butler-Young: Like it's so, you know, it's, you're supporting small businesses. They're so thoughtful. The owner's in the store every day and he or she knows my name. And I think that might've been what Clarkson, if you read some of her tweets, I think that's what she was maybe hoping for. It's like these cool, kitschy stores that get that reputation. But I've heard experts say, yes, that's true. A lot of these indie retailers offer that. However, sometimes they're at a disadvantage in terms of training. So Lisa mentioned that, you know, what she's found is a lot of those independent stores are founded by people who have a passion for product, have a passion for a certain category of retail.

23:19Sheena Butler-Young: And then they launch a business. But there is no there is no training managerial training underpinning that. Would either of you add anything to unique challenges of independent retail when it comes to customer service? I mean, a lot of these stores, the owners are the shopkeepers. And when that is the case, I think it works out really beautifully. Even if there are other employees in the store, if you have the owner in the store all day long, the other employees are going to feel a semblance of like we are equals. We are both store employees. And that's yet another way to create the sense of I have a stake in the store.

24:00The owner has such a personal relationship to the product, to the concept, to the provenance of products. and it's something that store employees, other sales associates can learn from. And hopefully the owner is being very sociable, very gregarious, but I think -

24:17Sheena Butler-Young: I've seen that go both ways, Kat. I've seen it go both ways. Well, sometimes it's like if you're a manager, I've seen an owner of a store, and Jessica might have a thought on this, like be so aggressive about getting sales or be such a micromanager of their staff that you can see them treating you well, but then being like, okay, This lovely customer here wants shoes. Just go to the back and get the shoes. You know, you see them trying to make the sale. That's where it goes back to me. I've seen it go both ways. Or they can inspire their staff and be just really good at it. Oh, I've seen many a small business in which the founder, there's such a culture of egotism and a founder-centric culture there that the owner is almost a micro-celebrity.

25:00and it really embitters a lot of the staff because you know they they're trying to work their jobs and people come in they're like where's the owner and it's like well you just get me today but just to add a very pragmatic and maybe like doomsday situation but mass market brands have security and procedures and independent retail when there's an issue retail employees have this responsibility to de-escalate the situation. And so when I spoke with Stuart Applebaum, the president of the retail Holesans Apartments reunion, he was just saying how important is that retail workers in all sectors be trained in de-escalation tactics for their own personal safety.

25:45Sheena Butler-Young: It's interesting you say that, Jessica, because I've heard that before in terms of like something that we haven't talked about is this whole organized retail crime and all the things that store associates are faced with that can make them maybe not always deliver the best customer service. If you're worried about having to defend the store against theft or being attacked, I think it's worth stating clearly that no one should have to tolerate abuse, that there should be security measures in place and all of that. And that is a factor that can also make store associates less inclined to be focused on service or to even be motivated to deliver that.

26:20Sheena Butler-Young: I want to ask both of you, I think maybe the last question, but all this being said, one piece of advice for retailers listening. So Kelly Clarkson has the, what is it? The bird chirp heard around the world on customer service. Molly. The diva that is Molly has inspired all of us. Helen of Troy. She's inspired all of us to have this conversation about, you know, where customer service can get better in retail. Both of you, your best advice, a retailer who's listening right now wants to take away one tangible thing of like, how can I actually turn the corner a little bit more and offer more consistently positive customer experience?

27:04Sheena Butler-Young: Your best advice, Jessica? I think one immediate change that retailers can action on is just hiring one more person per shift. And I think the reason why Molly, you know, you're that girl when you cause all this conversation. But I think that a big reason why this really spiraled into this huge viral debate is because of the way Art of Plate responded. And I'm not, you know, denigrating their PR response, but I think the customer is always right. And when I worked in food service, whenever there was any kind of tension or conflict, no matter how ridiculous or absurd the customer was being, we would, you know, apologize and acquiesce to their needs.

27:54And I think retail is really a job for people with low ego and high intelligence across sectors and price points.

28:03Sheena Butler-Young: I love that. And Kat, give us the last word, your best actionable, immediate advice. Well, it's funny that Jessica brought up this like unfolding PR crisis for this little toy store. We haven't really talked about that. But, oh, gee, I don't know. I think it's just I think it's very hard. I feel for store operators. I think this problem is really, really hard to solve. I mean, and that's evident in the fact that we brought up true perspectives to the founder in the store angle, right? Like I was like, oh, it's good. And you guys were like, no, it could be horrible. And that's, I mean, that's precisely why this is, this is so tough.

28:45I think that like, going back to like this idea of like low trust, I think that, you know, everyone is very stingy with their kindness today, whether they are store employees or whether they are shoppers. and I think that like training has to start from a place of kindness and warmth and like this is this is the thing that bothers me and once again this is retail is so difficult because you might be a shopper that doesn't want this but like I think it's imperative that anyone who walks in the door of the store is greeted. And if you can't even do that, like something is off there. And so I think that there, maybe I'm contradicting myself in saying that there are like actually very simple concrete table stakes that every store should just be able to, to meet, which is greet every customer, be available to every customer, be kind to every customer, and that's it.

29:52And so like, even if you're working commission like sure a little bit of profiling is probably inevitable but like even if you are putting your attention more attention into i don't know the wealthier looking customer you cannot ignore the other customers in the store right and i i don't know that that to me is just very much table stakes and probably very hard to enforce but like yeah I don't know.

30:23Sheena Butler-Young: At the end of the day, more training, more kindness, more kindness. We can all take that the rest of 2026. The hardest thing to do is to be kind, apparently in 2026, which is so sad. But I believe I think it's true. Kat, Jessica, thanks so much for joining me. I really appreciate your perspective. That was a fun one. Yeah. Thank you, Sheena, Jessica. It's always it's always fun. And any excuse to talk about Kelly Clarkson, my girl. Any excuse to talk about Molly. Molly is that girl. Let the record reflect. Molly is that girl. Listeners, head to businessoffashion.com for more of Jessica and Kat's reporting on retail.

31:03Sheena Butler-Young: These and other stories are available to BOF professional subscribers only, and you can find the links in the episode notes. You've been listening to The Debrief, produced and edited by Olivia Davies and Angel Nemov. I'm Sheena Butler-Young. We'll be back next week with a new episode. thanks so much for joining us and be sure to follow us wherever you get your podcasts fun fun

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