A while back at my local home improvement center I noticed some checkout lanes that were do-it-yourself lanes. I have tried to stay away from these things. They don't offer me a discount for using it. If I'm paying full service price I want full service. The gas stations of yesteryear offered a full service island with full service prices and a self service island with discounted prices. Sending me to a self service checkout and charging me full service prices is akin to making the ice cream carton smaller but lowering the price. You are cheating me. If you want to gauge me raise the price. Don't treat me like you think I'm so stupid that I wont notice you gauging me by making the product smaller or give me less service for my money.
I admit that sometimes if I only have 1 or 2 items and the full service lanes are full I'll go to the self service lane. The other day my son and I went to the grocery store. We picked up 6 or 7 items and decided to go to the self checkout to save time. When I tried to input the code for the bananas, celery and lettuce it would tell me that I had entered an invalid number. So I cheated and used the picture method. I found and touched the picture of the product. I got the same results. I had two bottles of cranberry juice that weren't in the database. Five times a message popped up on the screen telling me that an attendant had been notified. Five times the attendant never even looked my way. I had to walk or yell over to the attendant show her the item I'm trying to purchase so that she could push some buttons on her screen. The product then showed up my my screen so I put in the grocery bag to try to scan the next item. At that point a message would pop up telling me to remove the last item from the bagging area. Again I'd have to get the attendant to push some buttons so I could continue. The attendant, by the way, was a 70+ year old woman who was only interested in making small talk to other store employees and not in giving me the service I'm still paying for.
A half hour later as we left the store my son said "Next time lets just go the the checkout line that has a person". I agreed and we will.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Friday, November 13, 2009
Customer Service
Whatever has happened to customer service? I think during the boom years when there were more jobs than there were people wanting those jobs our employees acquired an attitude of not caring about customers. Fortunately our company hasn't had this problem. I think it is because the employees can see that the owners of the business really care about and bend over backwards to serve our customers. I think this might be true for many small businesses. To a small business the loss of just one customer can have a big impact so an employee who comes to work with a bad attitude and doesn't care about the customers wont be tolerated. My thoughts are of the bigger businesses.
Last night I needed some chorizo for the batch of chili beans I'm making today. I don't use the chorizo that comes in a tube. Try reading the ingredients some time. I have two stores I can shop at to get the good stuff. It was about 11:30 PM when I arrived at the store. I only saw one other customer while I was in there and at least three employees. I quickly grabbed four items and headed towards the front of the store to check out. As I walked across the front of the store to get to the checkout line I saw an employee of the grocery store walk from the checkout area to the door at the front of the store where the offices are. She disappeared through the door. I found the lane that was open and placed my four items on the conveyor belt and began to wait. As I stood there I could see two employees.
The first was a man who appeared to be in his late twenties. He was standing in front of the customer service desk using the telephone. He was dressed as if he worked in the back room and doesn't usually have to worry about being seen. After he hung up the phone he went around and appeared to be working but didn't seem to be doing anything. The most work he did was trying not to make eye contact with me.
The second employee was a man in his late fifties or sixties. He was taking items from a cart and putting them on them shelves. Occasionally he would pull out his price gun and put a price sticker on an item. He was very good at that. Once in a while he would look at me as I waited for someone to and accept my payment for things I had picked out then he would go back to what he was doing.
Since neither of these two people had any interest in helping me out I started to walk across the front of the store looking down the isles for someone who could run a cash register. After having no luck I said something to the man with the price gun. He walked up to the cash register and stood there starring at it as if he was looking for the instructions. At that point the girl who had gone into the office rushed back out and took over to ring up the sale.
The girl may have been in the bathroom which is understandable or she may have been sneaking a little break while I was standing there. My problem is with the other two employees who did everything they could to avoid any interaction with me instead of explaining to me that the wait would only be a few minutes or at least talking to me so that the wait didn't seem as long.
The point is, if you work in customer service in any form every time a customer or client walks away or hangs up the phone he/she should feel like they just had an amazing experience or they made a new friend. If you can't give them that feeling then maybe you should consider a career move. You could get a job on a farm or something where you don't have to deal with people. That would free up a migrant worker to go and start doing the paper work to become legal.
Last night I needed some chorizo for the batch of chili beans I'm making today. I don't use the chorizo that comes in a tube. Try reading the ingredients some time. I have two stores I can shop at to get the good stuff. It was about 11:30 PM when I arrived at the store. I only saw one other customer while I was in there and at least three employees. I quickly grabbed four items and headed towards the front of the store to check out. As I walked across the front of the store to get to the checkout line I saw an employee of the grocery store walk from the checkout area to the door at the front of the store where the offices are. She disappeared through the door. I found the lane that was open and placed my four items on the conveyor belt and began to wait. As I stood there I could see two employees.
The first was a man who appeared to be in his late twenties. He was standing in front of the customer service desk using the telephone. He was dressed as if he worked in the back room and doesn't usually have to worry about being seen. After he hung up the phone he went around and appeared to be working but didn't seem to be doing anything. The most work he did was trying not to make eye contact with me.
The second employee was a man in his late fifties or sixties. He was taking items from a cart and putting them on them shelves. Occasionally he would pull out his price gun and put a price sticker on an item. He was very good at that. Once in a while he would look at me as I waited for someone to and accept my payment for things I had picked out then he would go back to what he was doing.
Since neither of these two people had any interest in helping me out I started to walk across the front of the store looking down the isles for someone who could run a cash register. After having no luck I said something to the man with the price gun. He walked up to the cash register and stood there starring at it as if he was looking for the instructions. At that point the girl who had gone into the office rushed back out and took over to ring up the sale.
The girl may have been in the bathroom which is understandable or she may have been sneaking a little break while I was standing there. My problem is with the other two employees who did everything they could to avoid any interaction with me instead of explaining to me that the wait would only be a few minutes or at least talking to me so that the wait didn't seem as long.
The point is, if you work in customer service in any form every time a customer or client walks away or hangs up the phone he/she should feel like they just had an amazing experience or they made a new friend. If you can't give them that feeling then maybe you should consider a career move. You could get a job on a farm or something where you don't have to deal with people. That would free up a migrant worker to go and start doing the paper work to become legal.
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