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

• Early Home Depot shoppers called Ben Hill, a fictional executive, in order to voice their grievances about negative store experiences.
• Cofounder Arthur Blank wrote in his book "Good Company" that merchandising expert Pat Farrah came up with the name after seeing it on a sign off I-285 in Georgia.
• Home Depot's cofounders would take the "Ben Hill calls" themselves, almost always taking the customer's side.
• "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.

But there's another name from the early days of the company that Blank credits with some of Home Depot's success: Ben Hill. Hill Isn't a real person, but rather an invention of Farrah's designed to solicit customer feedback.

Blank recently spoke with Business Insider about his new book "Good Company," the creation of Ben Hill, and his stint handling negative customer calls for Home Depot. He spoke about how the fictitious figure played a roll in helping the founders foster customer-focused values within the company.

The Home Depot founders had always sought out consumer critiques, with Blank and Marcus donning orange aprons and chasing down customers leaving their stores empty-handed. But at a certain point, Home Depot had opened so many stores that the method became untenable. So the founders took a new approach.

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."

Farrah had thought up the fictitious executive after seeing the name on an exit sign off I-285 in Georgia. The California native "thought it sounded friendly." Ben Hill is both the name of a county in Georgia, as well as a neighborhood in Home Depot's hometown of Atlanta. Ben Hill was also the name of a Georgia politician during the 1800s elected to the Confederate States Congress, the US House of Representatives, and the US Senate.

According to Blank, Home Depot's switchboard operators were told to patch calls for Ben Hill through to the founders.

"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.

"Bernie, Pat, and I genuinely wanted to hear from those disgruntled customers ourselves, because we knew that their complaints were worth more than the advice of any retail expert we could hire," he wrote.

Still, Blank told Business Insider that the issues themselves usually didn't make much a difference to the founders.

"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."

While "Ben Hill calls" could sometimes pinpoint merchandising or installation issues, callers frustrations typically went back to customer service. Blank said that after getting off the phone with the disgruntled customers, he, Marcus, or Farrah would follow-up with store managers.

This resulted in talks that were often "not the most pleasant in the world," according to Blank. He said that store managers came to fear "Ben Hill calls." In the wake of such a call, managers would gather the entire store workforce to talk about the importance of customer service.

"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," he said. "Our job is to make every single customer happy. And that means if they're not happy after step one, you go to step two and you make them happy."