Home Depot's founders used a fictional executive to address complaints - Business Insider

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Inside the story of Ben Hill: the fictional executive and hotline used by Home Depot's founders to listen to customer backlash

"Our job is to make every single customer happy," Home Depot cofounder Arthur Blank told Business Insider.Early Home Depot shoppers called Ben Hill, a fictional executive, in order to voice their grievances about negative store experiences.

"We established Ben Hill because, at the end of the day, we wanted to make sure that the store manager really thought of the store as their store," Blank said.When it comes to the founding of Home Depot, Arthur Blank and Bernie Marcus are credited with dreaming up the world's largest home-improvement business in existence today. Pat Farrah also offered valuable merchandising expertise while financier Ken Langone helped to bankroll the operation.

In "Good Company," Blank wrote: "In every store, we hung a sign that read, 'Are you satisfied? If not, call Ben Hill,' followed by a phone number." "So for the first number of years, myself, or Bernie, or, Pat Farrah would end up taking all of those calls," he told Business Insider. "You'd tell the customer, "This is Arthur Blank, I cofounded the company. Can I help you?"The founders ended up getting an earful from irritated shoppers. But despite the often-tense nature of the calls, the lessons gleaned from those conversations could be valuable.

"We never viewed ourselves as a judge trying to decide which side of the scale is right or wrong," he said. "The customer's always going to be right."

 

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Typos: 'fictitious figure played a roll' - role 'callers frustrations' - missing apostrophe ainecain

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