Abercrombie feels the sting of bad customer serviceWe know good customer service can keep customers coming back. And most of us understand the power bad customer service has to hurt our business.
Yet this simple lesson still falls on deaf ears at some large, well- known companies. Take Abercrombie & Fitch for example. A $3.5 billion-dollar retailer known for attitude in their advertising apparently has plenty of attitude in others parts of their company. Recently they were fined $115,264 by the Minnesota Department of Human Rights for discriminating against a disabled customer in their Bloomington, MN store.
It should have been more. Much more.
First, the behavior of their employees, as reported by Minnesota Public Radio, the StarTribune and others, suggests they have no idea how to handle any but the most common and simple situations. The situation started because a girl needed to accompany her autistic sister in the dressing room to try on clothing. The Abercrombie & Fitch employees said no. Apparently, they felt the girls were lying because they could not verify the disability.
Imagine if this was your daughter.
Second, the girl’s mother tried repeatedly to resolve this issue with various levels of management. She got nowhere. No apology. No resolution. Nothing. So, she dug in her heels and brought out the big guns. This eventually led to an investigation by the Minnesota Department of Human Rights.
Third, the company seems to have stonewalled this case at every turn. According to news sources their actions caused the matter to take longer and cost more than it otherwise would had they been more cooperative. MPR tells it this way:
The company “adopted a litigation strategy of ‘admit nothing,’ refusing to admit the existence of [the girl's] disability until the outset of the hearing, and denying even the possibility that she had suffered from the experience at Respondent’s store. These decisions escalated the cost of this proceeding for all parties,” Office of Administrative Hearings officials wrote.
And it gets worse. The StarTribune reported this:
In its legal battle, the company challenged the family’s claim that Molly was disabled, requesting medical and school records and subjecting the girl to an interview with a forensic psychologist…
What I didn’t see in any of the reports is anything that showed Abercrombie & Fitch has even the slightest concern for how this girl was treated in their store, by their employees.
Maybe I missed that part. Or maybe they simply don’t care.
This seems especially unwise considering the sorry state of retailing these days. In fact, according to recent financial reports their revenue is down 5.6% and net income is down by 42.7%.
Whatever happened to admitting you made a mistake and offering an apology?
They could have avoided a lot of legal fees and bad press had they chosen to apologize. I have hard time believing incidents like these are profit neutral. I would guess this incident will end up costing Abercrombie & Fitch over a million dollars in direct costs and lost business. And this is not the first time this company has been embroiled in such a case. A Google search brings up others.
Treating people badly is bad business. Even worse, it’s just plain wrong. I can only hope this case encourages Abercrombie & Fitch rethink how they treat their customers. Maybe they’ll realize fashion and friendliness can co-exist just fine.
Other articles you might like:
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- Work with your customers, not against them
- Target Stung by Customer Service Mishap
- Apologize quickly and sincerely
- 100 things restaurant staffers should never do (plus 1 more)
Customer Service Training Toolkit
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What an incredible story! It just so happens I am doing some research on poor customer service by means of social media for our company’s next retail newsletter and Abercrombie & Fitch certainly came up a number of times. In fact, they hit the MSN’s “Customer Service Hall of Shame” list in 2008. Almost 40% of survey participants rated their overall customer service as poor. So, this story didn’t surprise me all that much. I do know that they mystery shop thier stores. Don’t you wonder what they are measuring?
I believe that eventually poor service over time will not only affect bottom line sales, it can cause you to close the doors. I just don’t understand why this is so hard for some large retail chains to really understand! It is the most frustrating part of my business.
Thanks for your posts! I always enjoy reading them
Hi Kathy – It’s not surprising A&F made the ‘hall of shame’ list last year. They should be at the top of that list, based on what I’ve heard and read. Their problems seem to be built in to their DNA. Not sure they’ll be able to fix it without a management change. Anyway, thanks for reading and commenting!
I’ve just had the wost c/s experience with Abercrombie online and was doing a Google search to find their Management’s contact details to report my experience, when I found this article. Now I understand that I should not be wasting my time. It seems to me that this is a company culture issue coming right from the top! I would have thought it would be possible to target young/trendy customers and yet stay polite, helpful and provide good customer service. It seems to me that A&F has not managed to do that.
So, I will now convince my nieces to pick another brand for Christmas , I am not buying this brand ever again.
S T
Hi Sophie – glad to hear this has made a difference in your buying decisions. Too many companies believe they can treat people badly and not be held accountable. But if enough people get tired of bad service – then these companies might get the message. Thanks for reading!
Well i made an online purchase this year over 400 dls.. which is few…. This year i decided to buy AF for first time because i live on the tropic-Caribbean.. and due constant hot weather in mi university i decided to go for a sporty college look.. i placed my online order over 10 days ago and i’ve got over 10 different mails regarding my question about ” where the heck is my tracking number or order status” , it seems like no one really knows.. i also made internationals calls to their customer service and no one answers… First time i buy in a store like this.. and definitely last..never seen a worst customer service in the world , which is weird since USA does one of the best jobs in customer store service… thanks for reading
Hi Luis – sounds like you had a frustrating experience at A&F. Thanks for sharing.
Speaking of bad costumer service…the behavior of the Abercrombie store managers and the lack of respect for the costumer is amazing to me. I ran into a simple problem after buying $250.00 worth of clothing, I was issued a promo gift card for $50 and a deadline of Jan 30th to use it. The problem was that the gift card had a zero balance. Management didn’t have any idea how to look up the information with my reciept and promo number. I was told that nothing could be done. After numerous calls and visits to the store, I finally was able to track down a district manager. Wasn’t able to get her information until she was back from a long vacation. I actually had to tell the manager how to handle the situation and she still didn’t take down my information, just told me that she was not able to help. Lack of training and young managers is a big mistake, customer service is so important. Maybe Abercrombie should hire some older individuals who take their job a bit more seriously. Three visits to the store, two detailed e-mails, 7 phone calls and five weeks later. I still do not have an answer or my gift card. I’m sure I will run into another problem because it is now past the date of the promo. Frustrating!! I will NEVER shop at another ABERCROMBIE STORE AGAIN!!!
I didn’t know about the bad service from A+F until I experienced it yesterday in Honolulu.
I approached a store assistant who was chatting with another and was told she’d be right with me then continued talking about a party she was at the night before! When she finally finished and I asked for a medium sized tee, she told me she couldn’t help. Store assistant? More like glorified mannequin and not a good looking one at that.
When I was ready to pay, the people behind the counter made customers wait while they chatted and looked annoyed when they had to do some work. I just dumped the 17 items I had on the counter and walked out.
Abercrombie + Fitch, wake up! You rely on making your customers happy for giving you a roof over your heads.
I am here to share my frustrating experience with Abercrombie.
I placed an online order from Abecrombie online. The package worth about 100 bucks got lost by the carrier and it was never delivered. I contacted Abercrombie and was impressed by their bad service. All of their representatives claimed they are not going to help since I had a previous shipping issue one year ago. They were trying to blame me on their fault. They claimed it was their company policy. While being asked why this policy was not posted on the website, they said’We dont have to tell the customers’ Then they disconnected me. All of them ended with the same sentence: ‘As we told you before, we are not going to do anything further.I will not answer you any questions from now.’
This is the worest customer service I have ever seen. I am not buying this brand any more.
” The situation started because a girl needed to accompany her autistic sister in the dressing room to try on clothing”
Maybe I am missing something here. Let’s say that I go in there with my two boys, neither one of whom are disabled, and I say that I don’t want them to be alone in the dressing room, so I ask for them to go in together.
What possible reason could there be for telling me no? Shoplifting? Any suggestion like that and my money would spend very well elsewhere.
Not only that, but A&F only hire certain people. You will only see good looking people working there. They discriminate against people. I personally have never bought anything from them nor will I ever.
Similar from London June 2009 :
“Clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch has been accused of “hiding” a sales assistant in a stockroom at a London outlet because her prosthetic arm didn’t fit with its “look policy”, a tribunal has heard.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2009/jun/24/abercrombie-fitch-tribunal-riam-dean