How to lose a customer

I'm sure many retailers are struggling with the issue of customer churn. "Damn these loyal customers," you say to yourselves, possibly out loud. "What does a retailer like me have to do to lose some return traffic?"

Well, fortunately for you, I got an object lesson this weekend on the kind of treatment that will guarantee not only that you can lose a potential sale, but also that the customer involved (that would be me) won't set foot inside your store, nor any other location of your store, again.

The scene: The bike repair department of a shop that shall remain nameless. My 12-year-old daughter and I enter. I ask about getting a straight handlebar put on my KHS Urban Xpress hybrid bicycle to accommodate a Profile Design Century aero bar (you know, the extension they put on racing handlebars so you can tuck your elbows in and cheat the wind a little). Here's how, step by step, the bike mechanic gave me a clinic on alienating a customer.

1. Insult me. In front of my 12-year-old. "Get your money back. That's retarded," said the expert in customer service. Because, of course, there's no other way than insulting someone to get across the point that, in your opinion, the frame geometry of a hybrid isn't ideal for an aero bar.

2. Name-drop in reverse. "I had some guy ask me to do that, and I told him it's straight-up retarded," says the mechanic. (These aren't direct quotes, but an accurate representation. Except when you see the words "straight-up" and "retarded." Those are direct quotes.) He went on to tell me that this (presumably former) customer had said, "Well, my coach said it's a good idea, and my coach is a national cycling team coach," to which the mechanic replied, "Well, you can tell your coach that (insert name here) from (insert shop name here) says that's retarded, and he won't do it."

I will now use italics as my sarcastic type face. Oh, jeez, well, I'll take the advice of the bike mechanic over that of the national cycling coach. I mean, what could he know; he only coaches international calibre athletes, unlike the bike mechanic, who does seriously technical mountain biking and commutes. I'm sure that coach knows nothing about the physiology of riding, and he's probably never done any mechanical work on a bike.

Tell you what ... not only will I take the advice of the coach over the mechanic's, I'll take the advice of the student. Boasting that you oppose what a recognized authority says without having the qualifications to contradict him doesn't buy you any cred whatsoever.

3. Tell me all about your experience, because mine isn't what matters. I was then treated to a 10-minute lecture about how that would never work for him, how he rides, how he's sick of people who come in wanting a tri bike when they're only gonna ride two triathlons and then what are they gonna do because tri bikes are only good in a straight line and ...

Well, if you'd stopped to ask: Unlike you, I am not a mountain biker. I do not commute on my bike. As impressive as it is that you can manage that sphinctre-shrinking heads-up at King and Spadina, that's all irrelevant to me. If you'd let me, or these other people who want a tri bike, get a word in edgewise, you'd discover that for the most part, I ride on paved trails, I spend some, but not a a lot of, time in traffic, I DO SPECIFICALLY want to compete in a triathlon and thus want to tune my bike for that, and I'm not so stupid that I'd actually use aero bars in traffic. What kind of yutz do you think I am?

Anyway, short version ... I'll never darken the doors of that chain of stores again, though I used to drop about $100 a year for a variety of stuff. So, if you wanted to lose a customer, mission accomplished.

I've since dug through the online forums, and the consensus seems to be: Aero bars on your hybrid offer a comfortable hand-position option. Expletive-deleted the bike-shop boys who laugh at you. They don't have to ride your bike.

There's another shop, a specialty shop, that's a little bit further up another road from me. I'll ask them about putting a straight bar in, and solving the 0.1-mm compatibility issue I have. I'm sure I'll get a more mature response.