Portas is on a crusade for better customer service. But were cheap, 'fast fashion' chains really the right target?
I'm unsure who Mary Portas is most cross with: the British high street with its piles of crumpled clothes strewn willy-nilly across shop floors, or the British public for still shopping there. Last night we all got our orders, Portas-style. Fashion companies need to stop putting profits above customer service, shoppers need to stop putting up with it. Basically, we all need to pull our (over-the-knee, merino) socks up. Or else.
But Portas's latest attempts to single-handedly sort out a huge tranche of the retail sector ? at one point she actually referred to "my whole revolution" ? left me wondering if she was aiming at the wrong target, although obviously, I'd rather not be the person to brook that particular opinion with her. It would be lovely to have better service. But surely the disappointing truth ? that yes, people are prepared to queue for five hours to buy �7 tops so flammable a static shock from the carpet could prove fatal ? rather undermines the idea that businesses actually need to offer anything else. If we want good service, we'll go to John Lewis and buy grown-up things for grown-up prices. If we want a bargain, we'll get our elbows out and rummage around in the Primark dustbins of tat to a soundtrack of grunting Saturday girls. Everyone's happy.
Mary, however, is not. Which is why she dons a ludicrous wig, various grey items of clothing and, for no reason I can fathom, comedy fake accent. It's odd how defined she is by hair and hosiery ? without them, she seems altogether less like a slightly affronted superhero, and altogether more normal.
Chris, the man in charge of Pilot ? a presumably fire-proofed temple to what might kindly be described as "a load of old tut" ? would probably rather the less terrifying Portas had turned up, as he trots out the usual platitudes about being unable to wait to hear her ideas. But nobody on Mary's programmes ever seems to really want to hear her ideas. They just want her to come and make them some more money and raise their profile; her ideas and criticism are a surprisingly cumbersome stepping stone on the way to achieving that goal.
In a move that appears to have been nicked wholesale from Little Chef, Chris agrees to trial Mary's plan ? a plan that looks suspiciously like it could also have featured in the Mary Queen of Shops format ? in one store first. This is what always happens when campaigning TV experts try to persuade bosses to spend money, as it brings PR benefit without massive costs. (It works: I have been to Heston Blumenthal's Little Chef. Never set in foot in an old one.) But surprisingly Chris agrees to implement the scheme nationwide. Or at least I think he does, he's only got the sentence halfway out before Portas has declared her victory.
Next week Portas is tackling sofa superstores, which to me seems a slightly more sensible target, in that good customer service is rather more important when you're handing over hundreds of pounds - although I doubt very much Mary will uncover a boss who cares about service for the sake of it, which strikes me as a flaw at the heart of her crusade. In any case, I'd far rather watch an hour of Portas's guerilla shopping assistants, who made an all-too-brief appearance last night, marching into stores, dropping their parkas and offering to help people. Now that is a revolution.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2011/jan/20/mary-portas-secret-shopper
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