When it came right down to it, my wife said she always tries to buy from places that make returning merchandise easy. Examine her criteria for a minute. Of course she tries to get high quality stuff, but she didn't say she only shops where quality merchandise is offered; she shops based on how easy it is to return stuff that is defective or she just doesn't like. I consider the quality of a product or service-not as an enticing extra-but as a standard. The baseline. If you think your company will attract customers solely because your stuff is higher quality, think again. Most of us can't tell the difference (unless you've got some pretty crappy stuff or some pretty cool stuff). Most of us don't even comparison shop, we go to a place we trust and buy the stuff they carry.

When it comes to trusting the place where we buy stuff, we expect the stuff to be good. Trust is not so much a matter of whether we think we will like what we buy; trust involves how easy we think you will be to work with if we are not happy. For instance, we get most of our groceries from our local grocery chain. For extra-cool stuff, Kanitta likes to shop at Trader Joe's. Why? She says, "I love their return policy. You can return stuff even if there is nothing wrong with it. If you buy a food item and just don't like it, you can return it for that reason alone." Now, I'm sure somewhere along the line someone in the executive offices at Trader Joe's said, "Money-back returns just because you don't like something? That's crazy!" Luckily, enough other Trader Joe's executives shouted that person down and instituted a policy that has-without their knowing it-ensured that my wife buys a lot more stuff from them than she otherwise would. Every purchase involves a risk. But taking caveat emptor out of the equation is a great enticement to buy. The simple act of removing risk from the process of experimentation encourages more buying (and all buying is experimentation).

Here is the real point, however; without good employees to make the return easy, Trader Joe's policy wouldn't be worth the organic, bleach-free, fully-compostable paper it was written on. I have seen this first hand. I am a typical guy, I hate returning stuff. I figure that if I don't like something I just won't buy it again. My wife hates the idea of spending money on things that don't work out, so she returns stuff much more readily than I do. My abstention from the return process allows me to stand back and watch the interaction itself. Every time she goes into Trader Joe's and says, "I didn't like this, I would like to return it" the clerk gives a big smile and says, "I'm sorry about that, let me get you a refund right away." The clerk is just as friendly giving money back and she is taking it. Because of that simple fact, my wife and I spend a TON of money at their store.

During one visit, my wife had to make a return and the clerk must have been new. He looked at the package with an expression of, "This looks fine to me" and asked, "Is there anything wrong with it?" This was said with a different tone than you get when you return a broken clock and the clerk asks, "Is there anything wrong with this that we should know about?" In the second example, you understand that question is necessary in order to know if the item is safe to put back on the shelf. However, the grocery clerk was asking with a tone of "I don't get it. There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with it." Another clerk was standing nearby and heard the question. She jumped in and looked at the guy with an expression of you are new, I'll explain later and said to Kanitta, "No problem. We'll refund that for you right away." I can imagine that she told the new guy after we left, "We don't pressure the customer to give a reason. That's not who we are."

Compare that attitude with the one we experienced at a big-box housewares store. We wanted to buy new bed linens, so after weaving around the big blue store where every product name had an umlaut over the "o" we finally found what we were looking for. We got the sheets and bedspread home and, after one washing, noticed odd-colored spots on the linen. We knew our washer was fine because spots didn't appear on other laundry, so we took the stuff back. After waiting for our number to be called, we stepped up to the return counter where the staff member had obviously been trained to believe that efficiency and friendliness were mutually exclusive conditions.

We handed her the linens that we had neatly folded and returned to their original package. She thrust out her hand and said, "Receipt!" with the tone of a border guard demanding to see "your papers!" We dutifully handed over the receipt and told her there must be something wrong with the fabric because spots appeared after the first washing. "Oh, you used them already. Wait here!" she said while scooping up the package and disappearing behind a set of swinging doors. I looked at Kanitta and said, "Where is she going?" Kanitta said, "Probably to examine the spots for herself." "Great," I said. "The best customer service is when you make your guests feel like you suspect them of foul play." Suspicion doesn't encourage repeat business.

The border guard returned without the package and said, "I can only give you a store credit. We usually don't accept returns on bedding." At this point I was happy to get out of the store without having to show my passport. We said a store credit would be fine and, as she was preparing it, my wife told her we had bought something the week before that didn't fit and wanted to know if we could return something without a receipt. Kanitta asked this because some stores in America use something called a computer. If you don't have a receipt, the store can look up the purchase using your credit card and handle the return that way. Computers; who knew?

After my wife asked this I looked at her like she was crazy. We were being released from the building with a store credit (for merchandise that was defective, mind you) and she asked about a no-receipt return? I expected an army of staff members wielding Swiss Army knives to descend upon us. Hey, people disappear all the time, you know. The clerk peered at us over her reading glasses and declared, "We cannot take a return without a receipt!" I grabbed my wife, donned our disguises, and slipped out the back. If we need to ever use that store credit, I plan to send a friend in for me.

Stevie Ray is a nationally recognized corporate speaker and trainer, helping companies improve communication skills, customer service, leadership, and team management.  He can be reached at www.stevierays.org or stevie@stevierays.org.

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