Coldwater Creeks Offers Customers a Job, But It All Ends There
What better way to hire employees than to recruit from among your own loyal customers.
That’s what Coldwater Creek is doing. It is sending out postcards to known buyers that live near new store locations and inviting them to “become part of the Coldwater Creek team.” Good timing since so many people are out of work. The card identifies the location of the new store and provides an 888 number for interested parties to call.
The postcard goes on to read that the company offers flexible hours, a friendly work environment and a generous discount.
The pluses are obvious: postcard recipients are intimately familiar with the brand. They have likely made a purchase on more than one occasion either in store, online or through the catalog. It can be assumed that they like the brand, probably talk about it with their friends and family and show off their new clothes and accessories.
A new hire coming in from this postcard campaign is probably walking in the door with the same level of competence as an employee—initially unfamiliar with the brand—who has been training in-store for months. This brand-recruited new hire can talk easily and with pride to customers about the brand, its clothes, shoes, jewelry and other items. She will save the firm on training costs, take advantage of the discount she is offered and continue to show off all her new purchases to friends and family, who in turn will come to buy and tell their friends.
It’s an impressive way to hire and it all started off so great … until … the call to the 888 number. A recorded message asks the caller to leave her name, telephone number, store location where she would like to work and position desired. It then says a store representative will call back as soon as possible.
But then the weeks and weeks drag on before a month goes by with no call. People looking for work today almost expect to get dismissed. But, here is a brand the caller has supported. The brand has in turn shown its support for the customer by offering her a job. She reached out and no one called back.
So now that same customer that once shopped, showed off her clothes to friends and talked up the brand, is likely telling a very different story.
The explanation is probably pretty straightforward. Coldwater Creek may have gotten so many calls they couldn’t handle them all. I tried to contact Coldwater Creek myself to find out what happened. No call back there either.
June 16th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
I wonder why Coldwater Creek (CC) would have used an 888 number for this campaign and not have driven folks to a web address instead that would have collected all the info they were asking folks to leave on a phone voice mail ?? such as name, telephone number, store location where they’d like to work and position desired. This was a great idea executed uber-poorly. This would have worked very well on the web. On the back end, where all the job seeker data is collected, Coldwater Creek could have worked it so that designated CC reps would have received an email alerting them to whenever someone in their territory (store location area/region) submitted their interest. Through a web-based form kind of set up with trackable/search capabilities on the back end (where leads are assigned to specific reps), CC would have been much better able to administer this job hiring initiative. Sometimes it amazes how really large, multi-million dollar companies just don’t get it or don’t know how to better utilize the tools or services around them to maximize the potential and effectiveness of any given campaign, program or outreach effort.