Who’s to Blame for Bad Customer Service?

Sheena Butler-Young (0:08)

Hello, and welcome to The Debris from The Business of Fashion, where each week we delve into our most popular BoF professional stories with the correspondents who created them. I'm Senior Correspondent Sheena Butler-Young.

American Idol winner Kelly Clarkson is no stranger to the spotlight. But recently, the singer and talk show host went viral for something that had nothing to do with her music. Clarkson recently took to X to share an in-store experience that she said left her feeling like Julia Roberts and Pretty Woman.

The singer said she was treated as though she couldn't afford a $15,000 mechanical bird she wanted to buy at a Brooklyn Home Goods store. The store disputes her account saying the bird wasn't actually for sale. But that incident struck a nerve, sparking a much bigger conversation about customer service, who gets treated well, and who doesn't. It comes at a particularly tricky time for retailers, as shoppers demand better service while store employees face mounting pressures of their own.

Joining me to discuss what's going wrong and what retailers can do about it are my colleagues, Jessica Kwon and Cathaleen Chen. Kat, Jessica, welcome to the debrief.

Cathaleen Chen (1:13)

Great to be here, Sheena.

Sheena Butler-Young (1:16)

This story is bringing up a lot of familiar themes in retail, from store associate trainings and wages to bad management, to entitled customers, all the things. Jessica, you've recently reported on this, alongside yours truly. We wrote an article about why customer service is perpetually poor across retail. And Kat, you as BoF's retail editor recently spareheaded our package on what makes a good independent retailer or all the amazing independent retailers in the world. Before we get into the big picture, I want to start with the shopping trip that got everyone talking. Jessica, why don't you tell us what stood out to you about that and what you learned in your reporting?

At a high level, of course.

Jessica Kwon (1:56)

My first instinct when I saw the story on X is just, we all have this experience of walking into a store and you're scrutinized and made to feel like you don't belong there. It just reminded me of how extremely dangerous it is to size people up and make these snap judgments about their spending power and their income.

These are situations in which you often see people who are marginalized bear the brunt of that scrutiny. You know, many people of color, often black and brown people, celebrities who have made complaints like this before in the past include Oprah and Cardi B and most recently, LeBron James' wife Savannah. There's a reason there's this dedicated phrase, shopping while black, that points to this phenomenon of, you know, black customers being disproportionately scrutinized and surveilled. But you know, it's unfortunate that this incident happened for Clarkson.

Sheena Butler-Young (2:50)

I'm glad you brought up that point because I think, I mean, when we talked about this in the newsroom this week, I think there was at least three or four stories right away. And I think all of us had mentioned an experience. So extremely common experience. I agree with you, disproportionately impacting, I think, communities of color. Cat, I want to bring you in here because, you know, she describes this like Pretty Woman experience. And I, I sometimes feel like that is not a glitch in the system, but the system is working as designed, is that a lot of retailers have as like a value proposition to make people feel like we're too cool to serve you. The store is so elite that we're just going to, you know, treat you like you should be lucky to spend here. What's your thought on that? Does that attitude ever really help? And is it a real thing?

Cathaleen Chen (3:35)

So it apparently is a real thing. I was doing research about this just now. It's known as the snob effect, and there has been some studies done on when you enter a luxury exclusive environment and you are treated with an air of indifference or condescension that you are more likely to spend. Now, I don't know how viable this data is. I haven't read the studies. I personally find that very hard to believe. But I just really want to backtrack a little bit and just say, we don't know really what happened between Kelly Clarkson and this toy store in Brooklyn. But I think the reason why it's so easy to side with Kelly on this one, not only because she's one of the greatest pop stars of all time in my opinion, it's so easy to side with her because whether you're black, white, or Asian, or where you shop, this bad retail customer service is just so salient.