Background

My husband and I are at the exciting yet terrifying stage of becoming parents for the first time and with 6 weeks to go until D’DAY I thought it was time for us to get organised and buy our “travel system”. That’s pushchair and cars seat to you and me.

Being from a big family I’m no stranger to babies and the mountains of stuff that comes with them, so I thought that buying our pushchair and car seat would be a relatively easy and straightforward decision.

Upon my Mum’s advice I decide to skip the Internet research and go straight to the showroom: “You’ll need to see how it feels and have a go at folding them away” Mum had said to me. So after work one evening I took myself to the first place that came into my mind: Mothercare. Although I didn’t expect to need much help with this purchase it felt right to go the place that had always been the experts in such things.

The Experience

Once inside I realised that it wasn’t going to be as easy as I’d naively imagined. There were so many different brands and different models within those brands, all screaming different benefits and features. Should I go for the Silverscross Surf “The Bentley of Pushchairs” according to my style conscious brother in law, The Obaby Monty, The Chicco Trio Living or the Mothercare Saftey First travel system?!

And then there’s the car seats – do we want a combination car seat, rear or forward facing, Isofix or belted base for extra safety?

After 20 minutes of taking it all in and trying to work it out, I was feeling a little overwhelmed and with prices going up to £800 I though I’d better get some advice. Not to worry though, I’m in Mothercare. They are after all the child and baby experts. Surely they’ll be able to guide me through this decision.

So I looked around and it was really quiet being a Thursday evening and only about an hour from late closing. There was one person being served at the till, a couple of other around the store browsing, and then me. It shouldn’t be too difficult to find a member of staff to help me.

Other than the lady serving at the till there were two other members of staff in the corner having a chat and another person moving around the store looking very busy so I decided to interrupt the chatters to see if one of them could help me.

Just as I headed towards the chatters, another member of staff came from out of the back and header straight towards me so I left the chatters to it and asked Gemma.

“Excuse me, I wonder if you can help me? I need to buy a car seat and push chair and could do with a little help”

“OK” Gemma responds, clearly wishing she’d come out of the back a few seconds later. “Which one do you like?”

“Oh well, I do quite like this Silvercross one”, closest I’ll get to a Bentley, “But it says it has an Isofix base and I’m not really sure what that is and whether I have it in my car”

“Oh right” was Gemma’s response.

I thought perhaps a direct question was the route to a better response so I tried with “If I was to buy this car seat but didn’t have isofix in my car, could I still use this seat or do they do a car seat with this pushchair that doesn’t have Isofix”

“Oh, I dunno – I’m not sure”

“Could you find out please?” So Gemma went to the till to find out.

While I was waiting for Gemma I decided to have a play with a couple of the pushchairs I had liked the look off. For more than 5 minutes I occupied myself with pushing the display items around the space, and a few unsuccessful attempts at collapsing the pushchairs to see how easy it would be, which is not very without a demonstration.

I’d given up playing by the time Gemma returned.

“Yeah, you can put all the Isofix seats in with a seatbelt”.

“Ok, right. So they don’t have a non isofix one with this pushchair?”

“No”

“And would you recommend getting this one even if I don’t have Isofix”

“Well it depends if you wanna pay extra for something that you’re not going to use.”

Well, I certainly don’t want to do that but I did want to know a little more about this wonderful Isofix so I tried “Can you explain to me what Isofix actually is and then benefit of using it?”

“Well it’s just something to attach the seat to your car”

“How can I find out if I’ve got it in my car?”

“Oh, I reckon you’d need to go to the garage”

“Is it safer to have Isofix rather than just using the seatbelt?”

“I dunno, probably”.

I did think about asking Gemma to go and find out for me but I didn’t fancy waiting another 10 minutes for her to return with another one word answer so I decide to thank her for her ‘help’ and be on my way.

To give Mothercare the benefit of the doubt I did return with my husband at the weekend to continue our research. Unfortunately, Nikki was not much more helpful that Gemma had been a couple of days earlier, with a similar set of one word responses to my husbands questions.

Later that day we decided to visit an independent local baby store a few towns away from us, which we’d stumbled across via a flyer in the hospital maternity waiting room. I pre-warned my husband that it would probably be more expensive than what we’d seen in Mothercare.

We were greeted by Charlotte, who after our Mothercare experiences, was a breathe of fresh air. She was of a similar age to Gemma and Nikki early 20’s I’m guessing.

After allowing us some time to browse, Charlotte had approached us with the offer of help and advice. She asked us lots of questions about what we thought we wanted, our expectations and our budget and then narrowed down the overwhelming choice with some recommendations to fit our brief.

Charlotte demonstrated how to attach the different seat options for the travel systems she’d recommended and how to them fold away. She encouraged us to try pushing them around outside the store on the different concrete and grass surfaces, while she got us the prices for each combination, which to my surprise were hardly dissimilar to the prices we’d seen in Mothercare.

Alignment

I wondered whether it was me and that perhaps I’d got the wrong idea about Mothercare’s position so I checked their website, which said:

“Mothercare is the name for Prams, Pushchairs, Car Seats, Cot Beds, Baby Clothes and much more. Established as the number one retailer for mums to be and parents alike, Mothercare can offer a wide selection of everything you will need for your Nursery, all your Maternity Wear and all the Toys and Gifts your baby could want. Supplying some of the finest quality pushchairs from Bugaboo, Maclaren, Silver Cross, Britax and Maxi Cosi. We of course have an endless supply of advice on pregnancy and parenting issues from our Experts in the field and all you Mums out there.”

So I wasn’t being unreasonable expecting a little bit of knowledge and guidance about the products that they were trying to sell to me. I came away from Mothercare with no better idea of what to buy than before I went in, however after visiting the local store I felt excited and although we weren’t quite ready to make our decision, we were both clear that when we did that we’d be going back there to make our purchase.

Charlotte had been extremely willing, helpful and knowledgable which was a stark contract to the service we had at Mothercare.

Of course during a recession it can be difficult time for all retailers, and Mothercare is seeing its share of losses and store closures but it struck me that Mothercare’s issue is not the climate it’s operating in, but that the experience you get at Mothercare, unfortunately does not match the brand’s promise.

This can’t have happened over night, and my mum assures me that in her day, Mothercare really was the place to go to find out about, and then buy the latest baby equipment, so when did they lose their way?

Reducing their high street presence and focusing on cheaper retails spaces on the outskirts of towns sounds like a smart business decision at a time like this, so it’s a shame that Mothercare don’t appear to be applying the same level of intelligence to the training (and possibly recruitment) of their sales staff.

It only takes one part of the experience to ruin the entire customer journey and the outcome – well I’ll be spending our £800 elsewhere and not only sharing our experience here on this blog, but will also share it with all the other Mum’s to be that we’ve been meeting in the parenting classes.