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I had a very interesting customer service experience today.

Not being very familiar with the service at Burberry, I had thought that High-End Retail Branding 101 and the education course on the Experience Imperative for high-end fashion retailers selling disproportionately priced objects-of-desire was so last decade, so to speak.  Apparently, it’s not. For some, the need is is very prevalent today, and the difference between brands that are profiting and brands that aren’t in this very grim economy is as clear as it is cold in Chicago today (so I hear, with the -40 degree windchill factor).

I’m not sure how certain companies think they can sell a handbag for $2,000, or a coat for $1,500, without selling the customer on the idea of the experience. This is the Experience of being an owner of a product from a certain fashion house with a distinct character. This ownership experience has three facets, somewhat like the Designer Fashion Trinity of High-end Retail Imperatives – customer service experience, quality experience, and exclusivity experience. They are all different but all inter-related, and all very necessary. For example, you can’t be high-end and charge $2,000 bucks a pop for a cowhide leather handbag studded with strange iron objects without having your sales associates being able to tell the story behind the bag, the inspiration behind the design and why it’s so significant. And make you feel special at the same time (and since you’re special and the bag is special, you are meant to be).

I’m a sucker for stories.

My husband always teases me about how all a sales associate needs to do is tell me some obscurely complex historic tradition of clinically purist craftsmanship practices dating back to some monestary-type exercise and my eyes will get wide and I will become entranced – and cha-ching! I’m sold. I purchased the Bottega Veneta Medium Cabat after my sales associate’s story about the limited nature of the items due to the deliberate and very careful crafting process of the basketweave strips of vegetable-dyed lambskin leather – something about how it takes two carefully-selected artisans two whole days to weave these long strips of dyed lambskin around a wooden mold. Okay, I can be a little overzealous at times when it comes to quality, but every girl loves to don on their shoulder a fantastic story.

And then there is customer service. I don’t believe that customer service is about being waited on hand-and-foot. Nor is it about being lavished with empty compliments and fake smiles. It’s about establishing a relationship that connects the customer with the brand, a shared passion for the products and a deep interest in the customer’s tastes. Eventually, these events will lead to the ultimate goal of customer service – not to sell a product, as I believe that with well-done brand marketing, a fashion brand and product should sell itself (if you don’t believe me, visit the Louis Vuitton store at South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa on a weekend afternoon, and you would think they were giving away tickets to Obama’s inauguration with all of the elbowing required to get to the back of the store to the counter when the flustered sales associate yells out your first name above the noise of the crowd, and as short middle-aged ladies shout, elbow, wedge and swim past bodies to compete for one of the 15 available aloof sales associates’ attention for assistance).

No, I believe the ultimate goal of customer service is to make the product accessible and effortless to purchase if you are one of the exclusive few who can afford it. Some people get it all wrong. They think it’s being lavished with niceties and being brought Evian on a tray and being followed so closely that one cannot help but try to suppress the desire to fake a left or a right. Customers just want to have clear and easy access to the products, and have their questions answered promptly and accurately. Sales mishigosh doesn’t work in this niche market, because the pitch that your Culligan agent tried when he brought in that large plastic tank filled with orange lava rock-looking specimens and turned your kitchen into a science lab to showcase your allegedly indisputable need for a water softener in order for your entire family to not die of some kind of dark and mysterious mineral-induced disease, does not work in a high-end retail store – because the fact of the matter is, nobody shops at Chanel or Bergdorf’s or Hermes because they have a need. They shop there because they can, and it because it makes them feel special. You can sell a need, but you can’t sell a want. That would be Marketing’s job. To develop a stirring Want, and then the true Yodas will transform that Want into a Need, all in your head. (Although, another great sales strategy is being able to sniff out woeful Wants, and remind these customers of their Wants).

Bottom line on my story of today – Burberry has some kind of obscure policy where charge-send purchases can only be made if the customer physically shows up at a store. Minus one for lack of access to the product. I drove four and a half hours (this was my stupidity) on a Friday afternoon to to the nearest outlet store so that I could place an order for an item I discovered two years ago at the boutique that I should have just purchased on the spot and had been kicking myself ever since. I was like the main character in one of those sappy romance movies where this guy sees this amazing woman in a used books store and decides not to approach her, and since then he searches all used book stores in case he might catch her again. Except in my case, I was making my husband look through racks, too. This past Black Friday, we stood in line outside of the Burberry outlet so we could elbow through the crowds and look for this long-lost recipient of love-at-first-sight. Thanks to my keen investigative and forensic specialties, I found the item on the East Coast, more than two years later, at an outlet store. So I went to my local outlet store to make the purchase. Except Burberry’s system is so last-century, that not only did they have to wait until the following day to place the order (“we can’t look it up in the system so we don’t know what the price would be,”) but the sales associate never placed the order the next day like she said she would. I had the East Coast store calling me, because they called my local store after I had told them I was on my way to place the charge send order, that they said they had no idea what he was referencing. It was probably the agonizing drive I was reminded of that made me so upset. I asked for the manager, because the sales associate who was handling my order on the local end clearly could not be accountable for one simple order. The manager called me, tone in annoyance (to my shock), and was not apologetic but dismissive of any responsibility as he had no knowledge of this order, until I started mentioning names of people from his corporate office. Okay, in a normal retail store, I would never do this. But I am a true believer in the Experience imperative somehow being tied into that very high price tag – if an inanimate, simple accessory is in the same price range as the Apple MacBook Air,  you have to expect that the Experience is part of the price tag. I was being jipped! This was my first-ever Burberry purchase, and I couldn’t help but realize why Burberry and Bottega Veneta have different price points.

They sell a different experience.