Why is customer service so horrendous in shops nowadays?

[whyohwhymetoday]

No eye contact. Often chatting away to colleagues and looking disinterested at you whilst continuing their conversation as you hand over £££

Nobody to help on shop floor

Poor knowledge about returns and items sold in store

No interest in helping me choose. That type of thing

I recently went into a high street shop and held up two tops. I said to a nearby woman with a label on for that shop ''Oh I just can't choose! What do you think looks best, this or this? :D''

She sort of looked like I'd ask her to inspect my undercarriage and said 'it's up to you, they're both nice' and carried on with what she was doing

I know these (mostly women) aren't paid loads but come on, surely it feels better to do a good job?

Hats off to M&S, such lovely and understanding staff in there well, not the cafe. They all seem to be rude

Lady servicing me at No7 in Boots yesterday looked like she genuinely couldn't be less interested when I asked her what shade would work for me

My 2 local B&M stores have really nice staff, always helpful and make you feel like you're not disturbing them or being an inconvenience by wanting someone to scan your shop so you can pay

My local Waitrose has hideously grumpy women who appear to be taking up a job post retirement and feeling very bitter about it!

McDonald's always pleasant too!

Vue Cinema, awful

Amazon delivery men, amazing. Once again, proving why Amazon just works for a lot of stuff

Honestly, be warned High street, you'll all be gone within 10 years and bargain stores like B&M/Poundland will be there, alongside maybe Boots because it has a Pharmacy

I normally get good to great customer service, but I think this is due to my attitude towards them. I don't expect people to fall at my feet because they're working somewhere, and if they don't have something I say no problem and pick something else. I always treat them with respect. I think people who work with the public can sense someone who is entitled and they're rightly sick of it.

If you are always getting bad customer service, you need to adjust your expectations or the way you speak to them in my opinion.

What do you mean i need a receipt ARE YOU TRYING TO CALL ME A LIAR, I NEVER NEED RECEIPTS IN HERE

(At 6.59) What do you mean you shut at 7 I ONLY FINISHED WORK I NEED IT NOW

Its not my fault my dog peed/shit in the cafe, I'm certainly not cleaning it for you

Why was my card DECLINED YOU MUST KNOW

And a personal favourite of mine...DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MUCH I SPEND IN HERE?????

its a shame there are so many nutjobs around as they stick in your head and the lovely normal customers dont

@ssd I get it but I do think that's where experience counts. It's not unreasonable to say that polycotton duvets covers will make you sweat more than a high cotton count.

Online you generally have product reviews to help. Knowing that the fit is narrow or the fabric is good quality is what makes or breaks some sales. That's kind of the sales assistant role too.

Why on earth would you ask a stranger what top is best? That's uncomfortable

I agree. My Aldi is the worst. All chatting and slagging customers and staff off to each other over their stupid little head sets. Huffing at you for reaching for items while they shelf stack! Ot my fault they shelf stack when people are trying to shop! Getting in a mood if you don't want to use self service, self service gives me anxiety as it always cuts out saying unexpected items in sodding bagging area and then some moody employee comes over and slams their fob down to fix it , God don't work in these places if so bad. Was in the pound shop at Christmas as staff were F ing and blinding about colleagues it was so weird! I've worked in customer service years, run courses, won awards for it so I'm extra picky with it. Just make eye contact if you can, be polite, please and thank you is all you need. It's a difficult job when you have nightmare customers yes but we're not all bad!

I absolutely agree with you. And back in the day, there were enough staff to man each department properly, and gain the training and knowledge from the other staff there, to give great customer service. Now, the buzz word is "flexagility"...the assistant helping you with duvets might have no training at all and will be covering the bed linens and the lighting department at the same time, alone...staff numbers used to be 5/6 staff per department, now its generally 5/6 people across the whole floor.....and staff used to get proper training, now its straight onto the sales floor and get on with it.....

Yet customers dont know that.

Agree with this.
This week it's my birthday and I try and get a weekend away. It's sale time in Europe too.I have two pairs of beautiful but bargainous boots I didn't set out to buy from Rome because the woman in a little shoe shop we found was so helpful. She realised I didn't need actually anything so bought out all the best bargains for me, helped find the right fit and offered a discount to help me decide.
If that was the U.K. I'd have gone in, felt a bit intimidated by the small shop, answered "no" to the uninspired " do you need any help" followed by either being stared at or ignored looked and walked out.

When shopping abroad this is common. Sales assistants give advice about fitting and colours without even being asked.

The customer is always right "in matters of taste"
Sorry, just had to finish the quote, 😂

Home bargains is really bad for this, some woman the other week in there was shouting into her headset she was annoyed the manager is asking her to work more hours because it would affect her UC!!!

Vote with your feet. There's good and bad. Customer service is, in general, shockingly poor compared to when I was a young woman working in retail. My god, we would have been sacked for talking to colleagues instead of tending to customers.

My local Tesco is full of terrible staff who will stand chatting, ignoring you or continue to stock a shelf for several minutes rather than serve the person standing in front of them. So I don't shop there anymore. I shop at my other local supermarket who have lovely friendly staff, they're very disability friendly too.
In fact the loveliest check out assistant is a young disabled woman whom I have had many interesting chats with (we're both gardening fanatics!). She genuinely seems to like her job.

As an older woman myself who used to work in retail I'm always surprised that it's the older staff who seem to be the worst at their jobs. A lot of my local shops are staffed by older teens and they're always super polite and friendly in comparison I find.

Some retail staff near me are so
boot-faced their faces are getting stuck that sour.

Resting retail face ain’t pretty.

This is a fairly regular thread topic on here lately.

It’s not something I’ve noticed myself and can count on one hand the number of times I’ve received really bad service worth mentioning.

Does make you wonder what the people who are regularly complaining about customer service doing?

Have you ever thought that maybe it’s a you problem?

Staff in local CoOp are lovely, so friendly and helpful. Lidl are nice too. Not so good in our Tesco.

When I worked in retail, I found it utterly demoralising - it was just so hard to give a shit about a job that required no skill and didn't provide any kind of stimulation or enjoyment outside of chatting to your colleagues.

It does require skill though, all jobs do. Evidently since some shop assistants are very good at their job and some are not. Faking a smile all day is a skill for example. Engaging in chat with customers is a skill. Don't get me wrong, I know it's mind numbing for some (I lasted 5 days in a supermarket, fell asleep at the till!) but obviously it suits others.
Retail assistants on the floor in clothing shops/department stores though are there to assist, it's literally in their job title.

It's not a new thing is it, I can remember rude staff in the 80s. Most aren't like that, then or now.

The drop in customer service is an entirely predictable result of the way the people delivering it are treated by their employers, the public and society.

We've devalued these roles as a society, tell people they're too lazy/stupid/uninspired to do anything else, treat them badly and expect them to be grateful for the opportunity. Expect that these jobs are only done by the above, that no one should do these jobs past being students or wanting a bit extra money, and you're a massive failure if you are.
Yet..... Want flawless service by experienced and engaged staff.

We've got the service we've cultivated as a society unfortunately.

@Maverickess to be completely honest , I never expect anything to be flawless , we're all human after all. But when I'm standing at the checkout of a tiny (and otherwise empty) shop holding my item and two sales assistants refuse to acknowledge my existence until I politely ask if I can pay for my item , that's when I take issue. And this happened at a higher end shop.

I semi agree with this, I work with children and we prepare them for a long time for independence of course, but part of the narrative, sometimes implied sometimes said overtly is that 'you dont want a job just stacking shelves at Tesco' and there is a drive, as for all children, that they must go to university and anything else is failure.

I grew up doing retail, I worked in retail from 14 to 21, in the latter years it was as a supplementary job to other jobs

I took pride in being pleasant, helpful, a 'can do attitude'. If I wasnt able to deal with something right there and then I would say 'I'll be with you in a minute'

Those are basic courtesies that I expect from anyone, often times you walk into a shop, someone stands there doing something else, no eye contact, no 'just be a minute'. Nothing

So agree that we shouldnt keep saying that some jobs are valueless but dont agree that it means people can do poor jobs.

My niece was employed as a Christmas temp which has resulted in her being kept on full-time.

She received next-to-no training, she watched somebody use the EPOS system for 10 minutes and then was put on her own till. 10 minutes into your first ever retail job and you’re expected to jump on the till and deal with pricing queries, complaints, recommendations. Snapped at by the managers for asking for help because “it’s not rocket science”.
No briefing on their most popular products, no basic customer service training, nothing.

I completely agree with @Maverickess ’s post.
I don’t necessarily think poor customer service is excusable for these reasons, but I can totally sympathise.
Having done 10 years of retail work, towards the end of it I was completely drained and definitely not giving my all to a job where I was verbally abused and paid a pittance for. And sadly, the terrible customers much outweighed the nice ones so I did have a bit of a barrier up and became quite stand-offish, because I just expected everybody to be an arsehole!

Being busy doesn't mean being profitable.

Different stores will have different overheads. Different stores will have different demographics of customers, sell different quantities of each item with different profit margins, etc.

Any fool can be busy if you set up a shop selling £5 notes for £4.99!

Sometimes an entire chain will close (Woolworths) despite many of the stores being profitable - the unprofitable ones drag down the whole lot.

My earlier post was a bit off topic - I was lamenting the change in shopping and the move to online shopping.

I worked in a department store years ago and it was a very different world back then. We (the staff) were expected to be polite and helpful. You would be spoken to by management if you weren't and you might lose your job. Jobs were hard to come by back then - nobody wanted to lose their job. But attitudes to retail workers were different also. I come from a working class background and working in a shop (corner shop, supermarket or department store) was a perfectly respectable job. I know young people who started off as junior sales staff and worked their way up into high paying management jobs. There was a lot more council housing back then, so a low paying job wasn't a barrier to being housed. You could put your name down for a council house and expect to get housed relatively quickly. Rents were much lower then also. Although I can remember junior retail staff getting mortgages to buy a house in Dublin - it would never happen now.

I suspect a lot of retail staff these days are students. They're only working in retail to pay their way through college and expect to move on to better paid careers. They know more about the world than we did at their age. They understand that retail isn't well paid and aren't prepared to take shit from snotty or aggressive customers. If this job doesn't work out, they'll find another. Or they'll go travelling.

A lot of shops have closed down also, in recent years. What would it do for your morale if your shop is being run down and there are rumours that it's going to close in the next year or two?

Customers are so rude. They come up to you talking on their phone expecting to be served, snatch things out of your hand without saying thank you. I had a customer complain I was talking to her while serving her! She said I don't want a shop girl talking to me, I'm not her friend she's here to serve me!
Basic manners on both sides cost nothing.

@soupfiend

Those are basic courtesies that I expect from anyone, often times you walk into a shop, someone stands there doing something else, no eye contact, no 'just be a minute'. Nothing

We have that in our village post office. Most of the time, the only person running it is a relatively young lad, the owner's son! Absolutely zero customer service skills. No eye contact, never says please & thank you, doesn't even tell you how much your postage/shopping comes to, just points at the till display. You can go in and be stood at the counter for ages whilst he's looking/texting on his phone before he comes to the counter. He clearly doesn't want to be there!

The owner is constantly on the local facebook group whingeing about how hard it is to run the shop, asking people not to buy postage online, asking people not to have parcels sent there for collection as it's apparently "too hard" for them to find and hand over the parcels! Saying the number of customers is getting less and less.

No shit sherlock! We're all going to a different post office where you can actually get some service!

Whenever anyone posts back politely saying about the lack of customer service, she just fights back with a tirade about how hard it is to run a business and basically telling everyone they're lucky to have a shop!

This made me laugh. I live in mainland Europe and customer service is generally absolutely shocking. So bad, it actually makes me laugh now (after 20 years here). I find the customer service in UK generally very good- was back at Christmas and it always surprises me how helpful and friendly people are in shops!