If you, like me, count Miracle on 32nd Street as one of your favorite movies (the original 1947 version, when Natalie Wood was still a little girl, not any of the awful remakes), you will understand me when I say that I married into a family that held a reverential view of traditional department stores and their old-school philosophy of unexcelled customer service. Henry was thoroughly indoctrinated and is still a true believer.
Holly’s grandfather (who everyone called “Pup”) had been an executive at the venerable Dayton Company, Minneapolis’ top-tier department store, and had helped teach the family business to the Dayton brothers—Bruce, Kenneth, Donald, Douglas—who were the sons of company founder George Draper Dayton and who were, by the time I arrived in Minneapolis, the leading philanthropists in the state. Even if you’re not a native of Minnesota, you probably already know two of the best-known offspring of this family: the current Minnesota governor (and former US senator) Mark Dayton, and Target Stores.
The Dayton Department stores were rebranded as Marshall Field’s after the acquisition of the Fields stores by the Dayton Hudson Corporation, and then were rebranded again after Fields was bought by Macy’s. A great deal was apparently lost in the translation.
Dayton’s had been legendary for its no-holds-barred commitment to customer satisfaction. It was consistent with the philosophy popularized in the 1947 movie in which many scenes were filmed in and around Macy’s, which was then New York City’s upscale department store and sponsor of the famous Thanksgiving Day parade. A premise of the film that seemed to work at the time was this: if the real Santa Claus were to put in a stint as a department store Santa, where would that have been? Well, Macy’s of course!
In a key scene of the film, Kris Kringle (Edmund Gwynn) has a little boy on his lap who asks for a fire engine with real hoses. The little boy’s mother (Thelma Ritter) emphatically signals Kris not to encourage the child. Kris ignores her and tells the boy he’ll get his fire engine. The mother cringes.
“You see? I told you he’d get me one,” the boy exclaims to his mother.
“That’s fine. That’s just dandy. Lissen, you wait over there,” she says to her son. “Mamma wants to thank Santa Claus, too.”
“Don’t you understand English?” she snarls at Kris. “I tell ya, Macy’s ain’t got any. Nobody’s got any. I been all over. My feet are killing me. A fine thing, promisin’ the kid!”
“Now you don’t think I’d say that unless I’m sure, do you?” Kris replies. “You can get those fire engines. At Schoenfeld’s on Lexington Avenue. Only $8.50. A wonderful bargain.”
”Schoenfelds? I don’t get it,” she says in confusion.
“Oh, I keep track of the toy market pretty closely. Does that surprise you so?” says Kris.
“Surprise me? Macy’s sending people to other stores. You kidding me?”
“Well, the only important thing is keeping the children happy,” says Kris. “Whether Macy or somebody else sells the toy doesn’t make any difference. Don’t you feel that way?”
“Oh yeah, sure,” she says, “but I didn’t know Macy’s did.”
“As long as I’m here they do.”
“I don’t get it. No, I just don’t get it,” says the mother as she walks away in befuddlement.
A couple scenes later, after she’s has some time to think about it, the mother approaches Mr. Shellhammer (Philip Tonge), the toy department buyer.
“Well lissen. I wanna congratulate you and Macy’s on this wonderful new stunt you’re pullin’. Imagine sendin’ people to other stores! I don’t get it,” she says. “Imagine a big outfit like Macy’s puttin’ the spirit of Christmas ahead of the commercial. It’s wonderful. Well I tell ya, I’ve never done much shoppin’ here before, but I tell ya one thing: from now on I‘m gonna be a regular Macy customer.”
Kris’s unconventional approach created a public sensation, and Mr. Macy loved the idea, too. He ordered that all Macy’s employees put the customer first, too, and help secure Macy’s reputation for putting public service above profit—and in the process, create more customer loyalty and make more profits than ever before.
As the real meaning of Christmas spreads, Macy’s and its principal rival Gimbel’s (which had a reputation as a price discounter) even declare a holiday truce. One of the things which may be unknown to most viewers today is that at the time Macy’s and Gimbel’s stood across from one another on 34th Street. It gives another dimension of meaning to the film’s title that’s lost on today’s audiences.
Another thing that may be lost on today’s audiences may be the memory of what good customer service is. If today’s exchange policies are any indication, service has become as extinct at Macy’s as the Dodo or Carrier Pigeon.
Holly’s mother sent me a Polo shirt this Christmas that is one size too small. My mother-in-law still thinks of me as my former, thinner self. She will be ninety in three months and I don’t want to trouble her with the exchange—and anyway I don’t want to disabuse her of her vision of me as a thinner person. I called Macy’s today and was told they will not exchange the shirt without my mother-in-law’s credit card information, even though the shirt has a Macy’s return/exchange tag on it.
Now isn’t a simple size exchange a most commonplace post-holiday transaction? Isn’t it a simple way to assure customer satisfaction? Why would Macy’s technology systems not be prepared to handle such a thing, and consequently turn the happy receipt of a gift into a source of disappointment and dissatisfaction?
You might just accuse me of being old fashioned and out of step with the times, but yesterday I had a wonderful customer service experience. Another gift, one sent to me by my brother, never made it here. With only a UPS tracking number, Sherry, a customer service rep at a culinary company named Sur la Table, located the missing gift and had it on its way to me within two hours of my call.
She really seemed to care. She made it easy for me and pleasant enough that I want to remember her name. She told me Sur La Table is a big company, but she treated me like I was dealing with one of our little local shops and made the distance between us disappear. It has been more than a decade since I’ve bought anything from Sherry’s company, but like Thelma Ritter’s character in the movie, I have been converted into a confirmed customer.
The Macy’s rep, on the other hand, reminded me I was dealing with a big impersonal company that is hundreds of miles away, and that the high-service department stores of Pup’s day are an anachronism.
As we are discovering through this blog and our work for kids, technology is making time and distance irrelevant in our networked age. It has the potential to bring us all closer together as people.
It is a lesson that old dinosaurs like the department stores must learn or we will one day be digging their bones from the earth for display in museums.
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