A Customer is Not a Process
Come on … say it with me.
“A customer is not a process.”
Part 1
My oldest daughter plays the oboe, and plays it quite well. It was time for us to buy her “a good one” with full conservatory fingering, so we went (an hour’s drive) to the largest in-stock music instrument inventory store in the world: Chuck Levin’s Washington Music Center, a crammed-full, old fashioned-styled, complete-with-original-wooden-cashier-cage, family-run establishment.
Now here’s where it gets real interesting …
After doing all the right things (with attentive, personal service), we selected a handmade, wooden Howarth oboe and went to pay for it. Novel as it may sound, we had saved up for this moment and I wrote a check from our special-purchase savings account. The salesclerk in her wooden cashier’s castle dutifully processed the check, processed it again, and then somberly handed it back to me with a little slip of paper. “Telecheck could not validate your check. Call them on the phone there and see what’s holding it up.”
The telephone conversation went well enough at first: yep, received check request; yes, you have sufficient funds in the account; validated, excellent credit history; okay, updated and confirmed this info in my system file. Great! I asked for whatever approval code I needed to hand the patient folks here at the music store, and I’d be on my way.
--- Can’t do that. Not enough account activity.
--- But this is our special savings account for the rare, special purchase; not much activity.
--- No can do. Not enough transaction activity.
The conversation went downhill in a rush after that.
I was a process, not a customer---not even a customer-once-removed on behalf of the music store. And I couldn’t get him to see it.
Even if Telecheck did not empower him to approve the transaction, he should have had the customer-service-sense to pass me on to a superior who did. Nope. No way. No how.
The only solution he could offer was for me to write numerous checks of small amounts over the next seven days, and then try the larger purchase again.
I had an empty checkbox next to my name in their heartless automated system and there was nothing I could do---or that he would do---to fix it.
There in the music store, I started storyboarding a Telecheck music video in the fine tradition of United Breaks Guitars.
Part 2
After re-cradling the receiver (have you slammed down a phone in the last 11 years? … MUCH more satisfying than pushing an Off button), I returned to the old-fashioned, wooden cashier cage and summarized for the lady inside the one point or two that she might not have overheard of my emphatic telephone discussion.
She looked at me for a moment and my daughter cradling the almost-hers oboe, and said, “Let me see that check. I’ll be right back.” She soon returned and said, “No problem. May I see your driver’s license?”
Less than 10 minutes later, my daughter and I walked out into the sunshine with her new oboe ... proud to be valued customers of Chuck Levin’s Washington Music Store.
I know we are … I’m writing this post, and my daughter has the oboe and an unexpected, free Washington Music Store T-shirt that she wore to school the next day.
A customer is not a process; he or she is an opportunity. Try delighting one, and see what happens.








