Saturday, October 28, 2006

CVS Listens

CVS window in Cleveland ParkI don't know if the concept of "the customer is always right" ever went away, but if it did, well, it's back. We're living in an age where the customer gets what he wants or he goes elsewhere.

The Paradox of Choice pointed out the astonishing amount of options consumers have available to them on the shelves and also in the amount of places to buy those items whether in traditional stores or on the Web. Any organization that's unresponsive to today's customer might not stay in business for long.

An example of businesses working to keep customers happy, at least locally, can be found at the CVS in Cleveland Park. The store had large, colorful panels in its windows facing out to the street. You might have seen them: mostly red pieces, about 20x24 with CVS in yellow (or white) letters. Inoffensive, impractical, eye-catching blotches of color.

The Cleveland Park denizens, however, didn't much care for them and let CVS know that the windows might be even more attractive if the panels were replaced with photos of historical Cleveland Park. Well, lo and behold, fast-forward a few weeks and suddenly there's old-time Cleveland Park right there in the windows of CVS.

The photos are accompanied by short captions that are actually drawing passers-by in to examine the pictures and read the captions.

I don't think CVS burned any bridges or lost any customers by agreeing to this request. Well done CVS!

By the way, there's an egregious error on one of the captions. Get down there and see if you can figure it out!