How long do your customers have to wait to spend $900? If you are in the Verizon store in Greensboro and the answer is 72 minutes. After we entered the store, we waited 28 minutes just to talk to a sales associate about purchasing a new phone. Once we got to speak with an associate, it was another 44 minutes to get pricing on 3 models and make the purchase. So 72 minutes later we left with a phone. Not an activated phone, just a phone in the box, a return envelope for our old phone and instructions on how to activate the new phone.
On the positive side the store was modern and there were several phones to choose from. But the initial wait time of nearly a half an hour before we got to speak to a sales associate made us feel like we really didn’t matter and that our purchase was not that important.
Customer experience is more than the physical product or service provided by a company. It includes an emotional component that represents how a customer feels. An excessive wait time makes customers feel like their time isn’t important or that their time is not valued. That’s how we felt and that’s the story we’ll tell over and over again. You can’t ‘wait’ for WOW.