Triple S-- Sh!t, Sh!t and even more Sh!t

So for those of you who may not be familiar with Triple S let me give you the 411. The 3 S's stand for stock, shop and service. What it's about is that little survey that shows up sometimes on the bottom of your sales receipt where you get to call in to a toll-free number and answer some questions, most of which are a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the highest. The incentive to call is the chance to win $1000. Funny, 8 years or so ago it was $10,000, then a few years later it went down to $2500, now it's down to $1000. By the way, does anyone know anyone who has ever won the money?

What employees have to deal with is the dirty little (not so) secret that if someone gives a 4 CVS counts it as a ZERO! What is the point in that? I don't know about you, but I'm not someone who throws around perfect scores, even when I'm very satisfied with service. So that means that I would doom a hard-working, well run store to a ZERO if I didn't know the rules.The funny thing is that even though the claim from corporate is that they want to know what our customers really think of us field management spends an unbelievable amount of time and energy trying to get the stores to manipulate the scores to be higher. This is in large part due to the inherent unfairness of the survey scores, but it's pretty obvious that corporate doesn't care about fair.

Just check out this extract from an article that ran in the publication Drug Store News, coming from CVS executive vice president of strategic planning and business development Deborah Ellinger:  And there is no such thing as getting a perfect score. Nothing would irritate Ellinger--who describes herself as the "What If" person at CVS--more. "I am always dissatisfied when we get 'good' ratings," she said. "You might not be setting the bar high enough We should be continually looking at ourselves in the mirror and make sure that we don't get satisfied just because customers tell us we are doing fine."


Now, knowing that a store's "success" (read: bonuses for managers and pharmacists) is largely based on the results of these totally subjective ratings is there any doubt that it's corporate management's goal to make the bonuses unattainable, thereby saving them millions by not actually having to pay up on bonuses? The previous quotes from a corporate mucky-muck pretty much proves that it's the classic carrot on a stick being dangled in front of the horse. And it's no longer limited to Triple S. Now they have a whole bunch of other stats called "Key Performance Measures" or KPM for short. It's just another way for management to screw the management teams both in front store and pharmacy. Pretty much all the KPMs have to do with getting customers to buy into CVS's programs, all of which are aimed at increasing sales and profits under the guise of "patient care."


Part of what CVS uses to recruit management team and pharmacists is the promise of bonuses based on the store's performance. What they don't tell them is that even if they do everything right at store level their chance of bonusing is dependent on the results of a subjective questionnaire that is weighted against the stores. The previous quote shows that even if you do well at store level corporate is conspiring to make sure that the goals stay unattainable. Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy if you're an employee. If that's the way they treat their store managers what chance do the rank-and-file employees stand?