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

Basic manners have gone down the pan since Covid. It's worse among younger staff but becoming more common with older staff too.

More often than not "please" is completely missing "That'll be £12.98". or even just a blunt "£12.98". I always want to say "What's the magic word"?

I encountered a particularly passive aggressive teen checkout operator in Morrisons recently, as each item was passed over the scanner he gave the item a flick so it went to the far corner of the packing area, just out of my reach.

‘he gave the item a flick so it went to the far corner of the packing area, just out of my reach.’

That is so petty but sorry that made me laugh

This is a really good point, and doesn't just present itself on MN.
Get disabled people off benefits and back into the work place!
Only, don't put them where the symptoms of their condition might lead to a different service, or woe betide a slower service.

The shop assistant couldn't even be bothered to make eye contact with me and just mumbled! So rude!

They took an age to scan my shopping - shouldn't be working there if they can't do it quickly to keep the customers happy! We pay their wages!

Individuals are inclusive right up until it causes them a moments inconvenience, and then it's all about shit service and how rude people in customer service are.

My local Tesco the day staff are always chatty as in to customers and lovely.
Evenings. Younger ones , always dis interested , on their mobiles . Taking across the till to each other.
I went last week and as I got to the checkout I realised I didn't actually need one of my items. I said I'm ever so sorry I don't need this. She hadn't scanned it she huffed. Now I could have done what everyone else does and dump it on the end but I didn't as was a fridge item.
Usually I'd run it back but she was halfway through scanning everything else and I didn't want to hold the gent behind me up

@selffellatingouroborosofhate I think you get used to it! I've never been in a job where I'm not monitored. Some are more sensible than others though

It just gets to me when people bang on about calls being answered
We don't answer them, they come through automatically so you can't avoid them

Yes!

And it's often people with autism and other conditions who have to work in retail because they can't cope with a more stressful or intense job.

Evenings. Younger ones , always dis interested , on their mobiles . Taking across the till to each other.

Also on Mumsnet: "I had to work through sixth form college and uni, and I expect my kids to as well".

That's why you have younger staff on during evenings, who don't stay long in the job, don't get trained, and are far less likely to actually want to be there than the full-time day staff.

Or simply can't get through the limbo dancing, assault course, and flaming hoops masquerading as modern job interviews recruitment assessment days. An interview, a group exercise, lunch, and a second interview, for IT support at a secondary school. FFS. And no, this was not an academy school, nor was it in London. They weren't even OFSTED Outstanding..

Snap. I'm a midwife and have suffered harassment of all kinds and returned early from maternity leave because I couldn't afford to take over half the entitlement off after a neonatal death.

I would still never dream and never have treated any patient with anything but kindness, professionalism and compassion. If I couldn't do that, and understandably some healthcare staff lose their passion or moral for many reasons, you need to get out of the job.

Your problem is not the patients problem. And so, I really can't see why this doesn't extend to retail workers

Remind me again how many years of training health care staff get? Presumably some of which is "how to deal with horrible patients"? And how much you get paid?

Meanwhile, retail staff are in many cases thrust onto the shop floor with minimal or no training and paid minimum wage, and that's the better companies. The worse companies are using gig worker apps so the retail worker doesn't even work in the same retailer all the time and has to choose between forking over >4% of their pay to the app owners or wait up to a month to be paid.

I was shown how to use a till for ten minutes, watched using it for another ten, told "the panic button is there", and then left for the rest of my first shift at Sainsbury's. No training in defusing argumentive customers, no advice on how to not take personally the couple who literally stood in front of me bitching about how much they hated shopping at Sainsbury's and would far rather have gone to Tesco's, no advice on how to deal with Little Miss My Bus Is Due So Hurry Up trying to make her failure to plan my problem, nothing.

"But isn't it obvious how to deal with that?" No, it's not, because I'm autistic. And you don't know whether the person behind your checkout is autistic.

I was routinely suicidal after a six hour shift and yes, I got called into the back office for a dressing down about something I'd said or done, on the first occasion without even being aware that I was doing it, on two occasions in the five months that I had that job.

Unlike in health care, where compassion failure can result in care failure, no one ever died because a retail worker didn't smile or forgot to say "have a nice day". Holding retail staff to the same standards as better trained and better paid health care staff is absurd.

@selffellatingouroborosofhate Ha, not that much! Put it this way, I am paid to work 25 hours a week as a part time member of staff - my actual hours are about 35 for a lot of weeks.

I'm not talking about clinical negligence - I was talking about compassion, kindness, professionalism.

You know, the stuff that retail works should be doing too! Under less pressure because nobody dies if they mess up

Op say to them good job I wasn't a mystery shopper.

I notice how you didn't bother addressing the points I made about lack of training, possible neurodivergence, and some workers being "gig workers" hired ad hoc using apps that withhold their pay for a month unless they hand over a cut.

(I forgot to mention being in constant pain from standing all day with a herniated disk. That was really fun. )

People need to lower their expectations about interactions with retail staff ffs.

What are the consequences of a poor interaction? Yes you’re annoyed (as large parts of the general public all are these days!). You may not shop there again, hell you may even think you will achieve something by complaining. But let’s face it, nobody died 🤷‍♀️.

As someone who used to deal with complaints in a shop, the response is not sincere, it’s designed to shut you up and make you go away as fast as possible. Mostly as you have all demonstrated, your complaints are rarely serious enough to warrant someone to care. Urgh.

Lady servicing me at No7 in Boots yesterday looked like she genuinely couldn't be less interested...
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Male horses and cattle 'service' females of their species
I's love to shop at your Boots, sounds v entertaining!
Seriously, this could be flipped, customers are very rude to shop staff. They do not interact, they continue their phone conversations while paying, no please or thank you...

You're conveniently ignoring all the other points made by that poster as well as multiple others on the thread.

I'm also not remotely convinced that working behind a till is a job that requires any kind of compassion or professionalism.

Yes, people should be polite and should do their jobs to the best of their ability, but if customer service is genuinely that important then it's something we should be investing in - better training, better wages, better working environments.

But we insist on paying people the bare minimum, tell them they're useless or stupid and put them in a working environment with no support or care, then no, they're not going to give a toss about much.

Not retail but a Probation worker I once knew was so MISERABLE in her work, I sat in on a meeting between her and a man on Probation and there was no empathy, understanding or compassion. She was cold, unsmiling, hardly any eye contact (just looking at her laptop) and asking questions quite abruptly. I felt sorry for the man.

A few weeks later an individual said he would have liked a better relationship with his Probation worker but she just went through the motions and there was no real connection. I discovered he was referring to the same lady.

Thankfully, she changed jobs not long after that and stopped working f2f with people 😅

I think the reality is that for most people, a job is just a job and they don't really give a toss about it other than making sure they do the minimum required to get paid.

That often goes down like cold sick on here but it's true - most people work because they have to, not because they want to. And many end up in jobs of convenience rather than jobs they actually enjoy.

You really think that retail workers should be held to the same behavioural standards as healthcare professionals? Really?

You are just showing yourself up for what you really are here, someone who looks down on those that you see as beneath you. Putting your own frustrations at work onto everyone else.

When giving birth everyone deserves to have a good standard of care, compassion and understanding, I cannot say that everyone trying to buy a blouse in M&S should be extended the same level of service, sorry.

I agree that it's awful. That said, customer service right now chips away at your very soul.

Obnoxious and most often, completely wrong and unreasonable "I demand to speak to your manager!" sorts trying to get something for nothing and getting away with it. Eg. Company policy is that you cannot return XX item. Customer demands to even though it's clearly used, nothing wrong and no receipt. Shop assistant politely explains they cannot and explains why. Customer gets rude. Assistant tries to deescalate. Customer gets loud and nasty and a manager is called and instead of backing up the cashier, they pander to the very wrong customer, apologise and hand over money like the policy doesn't exist leaving the customer empowered to pull that crap everywhere. It happens all the damn time. And it's not like the sales assistant can change policies as they get a bollocking either way. I HATED that nonsense.
And for that you get minimum wage that doesn't cover the bills even slightly. No wonder they're miserable shits.
I don't like it though. If you can't handle god awful customers and still fake being cheerful and polite, it's minimum wage so go work elsewhere.

@RhubarbAndFlustered

When I worked in retail if a customer began to get nasty over a refused refund after explaining that its customer policy, I used to say to the customer "Would you like to speak to a manager " . Invariably they would say yes do the ball would be in the managers court .

Afterwards I would tell the manager the customer insisted on speaking to a manager and would not listen to me . Manipulative ? Yes but it saved me a load of shit that quite frankly i was not paid for .

Stupid thing to say. If retail workers were paid a large wage this would mean prices would increase and customers would complain about that!

I asked an assistant if she had a particular lipstick shade at the Charlotte Tilbury counter in a John Lewis store. When she returned to let me know they did not have it, she put a sarcastic type smile on her face and shook her head which I found incredibly rude in itself - she didn’t say a word to me, and she then quickly walked over to a colleague to chat and laugh. These lipsticks are not cheap, and I look forward to treating myself to my favourite shade once in a while. I was let down again at another Charlotte Tilbury counter as they didn’t have my shade, but it was done so in a professional manner which made all the difference.*

What did you want her to do? Get down on her knees and kiss your feet! How do you know it was a sarcastic smile and shaking her head indicates no!

I was in sainsburys the other day and wanted something from the hot chicken counter. A female worker was standing talking to the man behind the counter. She didn't move when I stood waiting to be served and the man and her just carried on their conversation. I just walked away.