With my customer service expectations?

[Winterjoy]

Another day of being completely blanked by a shop assistant and I'm starting to wonder if I'm out of touch and this is just the norm now in customer service?

I'm not expecting every member of staff in the shop to acknowledge me and have a conversation but I've just had an encounter at the checkout where the person serving said not one word to me (no response even to my 'hello' - it was honestly like I'd spoken to a brick wall!).

I know in the grand scheme of things it does't really matter but for some reason this time it's put a bit of a downer on my evening.

If you work for one of the big retailers do they train you at all? I know when I was in retail (a few years ago now) basic service skills were drilled into us as standard.

I went in Tesco the other day and stood waiting whilst the lad on the till finished watching the tiktok video on his phone. I was clearly a nuisance for needing serving! I used to work in retail, we would have been sacked for even having our phones on the shop floor!

Use the self-service till - you get a better conversation and it says thank you.

They're not being paid enough to pretend to enjoy the job anymore, never mind force conversation with every customer they serve.

I know it shouldn't be like that, but then they should be paid a decent wage they can live on.

Dd is working in retail currently and has colleagues who don't speak, more to do with disability than anything else. She works for a high street chain and their customer service is closely monitored. They tend to do online training courses. But really the manager is more concerned with upselling given how much they struggle to be profitable.

Surely acknowledging a direct greeting is basic manners even for free, let alone if you're being paid?

If people can't even acknowledge the person stood in front of them when they are being paid to do so they don't deserve a decent wage.

Manners cost nothing.

Wow this person wasn't on their phone thankfully but they were visibly annoyed (evidenced by very obvious eye roll/demeanour) when I dared to request help.

Well you'd think they'd work out the link between making customers feel shitty and losing repeat business!

That's interesting about disabilities - I'm not sure it was the root cause here as other non-verbal cues suggested annoyance (e.g. eye roll!). If they'd had polite/open non-verbal communication and just didn't speak, I may have had a different experience. Something I'll keep in mind though.

I worked in retail for 10 years for 3 different companies and never received any customer training. You are told how to work the till and where stock is but it is just taken for granted that you will know how to treat customers

I tend to get a bit annoyed when people say anyone can work in a shop. Yes most people can use a till but having good people skills when customers are rude, head office are pushing you to upsell, you are on your feet all day and balancing working the till, answering the phone, helping in store customers and putting stock out all on your own is not easy!

I always prided myself on being polite to customers but I admit it was hard when faced with rude customers to then continue being polite to all the ones that followed. I had a man tell me to look more cheerful when my grandmother had just died. I apologised to him. A woman commented on some ezcema on my face. I just stood there and took her comment. Another lady asked why I was walking funny when I was showing her to an item she had asked to be shown to. I was recovering from an ankle injury. I apologised to her. These all happened 15 years ago and I still remember them like it was yesterday. I was probably a bit ruder to other customers those days, probably unfairly but it is hard not to let things get to you.

I read somewhere that during covid a lot of the big retailers realised that the extra sales/customer loyalty they got from customer training wasn't actually covering the cost of the training. So it was more efficient to not bother. If service is equally shit everywhere, people still need to buy food and need/want to buy clothes etc so they'll still shop.

So did you say hello again as I would assume she didn't hear you. I use to work in a supermarket but after about 10hrs of being happy, smiley and chatty to every customer I'd sometimes zone out. I'd highly doubt she purposely blanked you

No-one is forcing them to do the job, if they can't be bothered interacting with customers then they shouldn't be in a customer facing role. Honestly, what an attitude!

I worked for a business where customer service was taken very seriously and most of us took pride in the way we dealt with customers - and no, we weren't high paid.

Are they being paid less than they were previously? (In real terms) that’s a genuine question btw, I’m not being snarky.

You need to go to Waitrose. The staff are always amazing in my experience.

The role is to enable the exchange of goods for money. If the business decides its important for their staff to also take pride in customer service and fake smiles and conversations and the like then they'll invest in recruiting and training. However if the business decides that investment isn't worth the return they won't.

I was having a similar moan about this the other day, and I’m glad I have the chance to offload on here!

My husband and I were in Lidl’s last week, and the man serving us was chatting away on his headpiece to a colleague. The only time he acknowledged us/said something to us was when he asked if we wanted the receipt.

I worked in retail years ago, and we would never have got away with not giving the customer 100% of our attention. I don’t expect to be treated like royalty, but I would just like be noticed.

Im absolutely not sticking up for him as he might be just having a chat but supermarkets are so understaffed now you are constantly doing the job of three people all at once.

Agree the vision of supermarkets have changed in the owners eyes. Years ago you would have loads of staff and customer service was paramount. Now you have a third of the staff and its about speed get them in get them out. Money money money 💰

But did he sell you what you needed to buy? Why do you also need to be noticed?

Funnily enough people probably will start getting customer service that aligns with their expectations again when more retail jobs are replaced with AI robots which will be programmed to be attentive. In the meantime think we will have to be satisfied with getting the goods we need.

Which shop?

Places like Aldi and Lidl are cheaper because they expect staff to whizz through X items in Y time. They aren't expected to stand and chat. They are to get you scanned and done as quickly as possible and move on to the next person so that they can have 1 person on a till instead of 2

Just to play devils advocate here, you don't know a) what the customers before you were like and b) what that person is going through at that point. I've worked in customer facing and customer service type roles for many years and always make a point of being friendly. After all, you are the face or voice of the company you're working for and manners (to me) are hugely important. That said, despite sticking a smile on and a friendly greeting, I've worked through miscarriages, bereavements, huge disruptions in my personal life. I'm also aware that customers could be going through the same. So, the customer that has sworn at me, been downright unpleasant or generally insulted me will generally have still had the polite 'customer services' me be kind and helpful. However, not everyone can do that. It may be that the person dealing with you was rude. But equally it could be that they are dealing with the most unimaginable crap and are just trying to get through their day.

Recently, I dealt with a complaint about one of my team, who a customer thought had been rude to them. I heard the call, and they had been difficult and condescending. My team member had been polite but firm and the customer had the same answer from me, the manager, as they had originally. They were perfectly fine after our call and understood exactly what we could or couldn't do. The only difference was that I made sympathetic noises and explained things slightly differently. My team member had lost her aunt the night before. She was upset, but wanted to work and did a great job. I made sure she didn't need to speak to anyone else after that call for a few days as she was worried she'd offended the customer. She hadn't done anything wrong.

Just be mindful, as decent CS people are, that you've no idea what is going on in people's lives. Yes, you could argue that you need to put a professional face on - and I agree to a certain extent. But people aren't robots.

What annoys me is having to wait whoile the assistant chats with a customer in great detail about a relative's operation or their latest holiday etc.
They don't seem to realise they're paid to serve customer not yap with their friends

It's not as if wages were wonderful previously - we were still expected to engage politely with customers and pay attention to our actual jobs.

It doesn't matter if the business invests in training or not. Basic customer service skills don't need to be "trained" to someone, it's just good manners and treating others as you would wish to be treated. Honestly, what sort of a world are we living in if people have to be well paid or be trained to be able to offer good customer service!

Incidentally, good customer service is not about fake smiles - some of us are capable of genuine smiles, no matter how difficult the customer, or how we might be feeling at the time.

I’ve noticed that too . I think we’ve turned into a bit of a zombie society.