subscribe
Getting in Touch with a Good Night’s Sleep
Buying a mattress is one of those furnishing shopping decisions that I can’t make on my own so I asked my husband Joe to go on a test drive at the mecca of zzzz’s, Sleepy’s. Naively, we started shopping the old-fashioned way, bed-hopping through the showroom. Not so fast. Turns out that the mattress business has changed. (Actually, now it’s probably the sleep enhancement industry.)
Rather than let us do our Goldilocks routine around the store, the sales guy (sleep consultant?) Tom suggested we take a computerized test called BodyDiagnostics ™ designed by mattress maker Kingsdown. Even though Kingsdown has been around for 100 years, they decided to make mattress matchmaking high tech by recording 18 strategic measurements (with your clothes on) and inviting you to lie on a special bed that juggles 1,000 calculations to come up with the perfect choice. Of course, the computer’s top recommendation was a Kingsdown but its ‘type’ seemed exactly like a competitive (cheaper) mattress that we had already chosen just by laying on it. (It didn’t hurt that it was branded “Serta Perfect Night”.) Maybe the system was a gimmick, but it did give us someone other than ourselves to blame if the mattress sagged.
So, I bought into this cool new world and signed on the dotted line. But a week later, I tried to call Tom with a delivery question. No dice. The store’s number just didn’t answer, day after day. Had Tom left me for another company? No. Like it or not, Sleepy’s wanted me to remain in their automated world, either using their 800 number with a huge phone tree or their speedy website. I have to admit, I missed the human touch. Lesson learned: When choosing products in a high-stakes, difficult to differentiate category, it’s nice to go high tech. But when it comes to service, I want the option of getting up-close and personal. Especially in bed.
share the love:
