I went shopping today and had an interesting experience. I was looking at some jeans in the corner of a store. One of the people that works there was talking with another customer to help him find some jeans. She came over to where I was looking. She said “excuse me” to me. I then stepped out of the way. She proceeded to talk with the customer she was helping grabbing a few pairs of jeans until he said he was going to go try them on.
While this is all happening, I couldn’t continue to look for jeans because the lady that worked in the store had asked me to move. She had her back to me the whole time after I moved. Then we the guy went to try on the jeans she found for him she walked away without even looking at me. I went back to looking for my size but couldn’t help but be annoyed by this situation. Am I being overly sensitive?
Do you think stores realize how important customer service is? Do you think they realize that if they have good (helpful) customer service people will buy more? And if they have even remotely bad customer service people will not only buy less they will just flat out leave?
After my experience I didn’t buy anything. I wasn’t in the mood to. I continued to look for a few more minutes just to see if someone might actually offer me some service. No one did, so I left. Shopping is an emotional thing. People buy based on emotions. You give them a bad feeling or something not to like. They are a lot more likely not to buy. Seems simple doesn’t it?
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Its another cold one today so wrap up , stay warm and have a merry xmas.. Cheers , Bill
@Gas Bill
Thank you. Have a Happy Holidays.
Customer service seems to be a simple thing, but as the saying goes -
“Common sense is usually not so common.”
This sales associate may have “profiled” you as someone they didn’t think was going to buy something, and so felt no need to go out of their way. And since they already had a sale on the hook – well a bird in the hand as it were.
Perhaps the store had not spent the time and resources into training this person as some stores consider employees expendable to a point and realize that most won’t be with them past 6 months so why go through the extra effort.
Stores that invest in their employees recognize the value of extra training and reap the benefits. Those that do re easy to spot and those that do not also very easy to spot.
All the best with your holiday shopping ….
@Wil Porter
Thank you for the comments. You bring up two great points. Profiling and priorities.
It always amazes me that stores, or the companies that own them, don’t realize the very basis of their business is sales. And as you said sometimes they don’t see it as a priority for their time and resources. What do you think they value less the sale itself or the people they expect to make the sale?
This is one of my pet peeves; I have even gotten so bold in my maturing years that I will say to someone like that “no, it’s okay, I don’t need any assistance”. I truly believe that the state of our economy is that most businesses and employees of those businesses have forgotten all about the customer. I also believe that until our economic world moves away from a focus on ‘share holder value’ and back to ‘customer service’ that we are going to continue to be in an unstable economy. If you expose yourself to other cultures you will see that they are still very respectful of each other. I attended a Realtor course with a focus on working with international clients. Something as simple as the way that we present a business card says something about us and our level of respect for the other person. The course taught that a two handed presentation of a business card is representing something of honor to someone with honor. All of our actions as customer service professionals reflect on our attitude towards our customers/clients. Worrying about making the last buck possible only shows that the customer is not important, what’s important is volume sales. The whole world of customer service has all but vanished and I also do not shop somewhere where I feel like I’m being ignored, or worse yet, processed through a sales machine.
Someone stop me, I can rant and rave about this one for hours on end!
Practice random acts of kindness, it will stop someone dead in their tracks.
@John Vaillancourt
Thank you for your comments. Everyone loves a good rant. I always find the little things that you learn make the biggest difference. A ‘two-handed presentation’ of a business card? You’ll have to show me that one. I’ve questioned the value of the business card lately (I’ll save that for another post) but that sounds like a way to differentiate and become memorable. You got my attention.