Welcome to Neufer's Mad Thoughts

Thank you for calling, er, I mean, thank you for reading the mad thoughts of me. If you are wondering just what the mad means, be it, ANGRY mad or CRAZY mad, well, that will probably just depend on my mood and what I'm rambling on about. Most of what you will read will be unedited, straight from my head to my keyboard and to your eyes so should I offend, upset or anger you, by all means, yell at me through the screen, leave me angry comments and feel better for doing so. I promise never to respond as I have found it's just not worth my time to respond to angry people I have never met. :) Have a nice day!

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Customer Service

Is quickly becoming a lost art.  I swear there are days I wonder if any businesses even bother trying to teach their employees what good customer service is and if they do, do they follow up and make sure the employees are delivering good customer service?  More on this later as I am in school and I should be working on something school related.  But just wanted to jot a note.

Okay, it is now after school and after the concert which I will devote a separate post to.  But back to the customer service issues.

I know it's an employer's market right now and having kept up on regular news I also heard that employee satisfaction is at an all time low.  Now most employers would so, "Yeah, so?  I have 20 people that would kill for your job so just deal with it."

Well the problem with that idea is that you have an unhappy employee dealing with your bread and butter, the customer.  Now there is a saying that goes something like this, "When momma ain't happy, nobody's happy."  Well that can be said of employees as well.  When your employees aren't happy that will reflect back to your customers and then you start to lose business over poor customer service.

And for me personally, all it really takes is one really bad experience in a store to turn me away, sometimes permanently.  And I will more than likely tell the management just why I'm not coming back anymore.  Now should the management have half a brain and correct the situation then I will consider continuing to give them my business.  But let me give you and everyone else out there a little hint:

When you are faced with an irritated customer who is telling you that they were so badly mistreated or your company screwed up so badly that they are considering taking their business elsewhere, the first words out of your mouth should be, "I'm so sorry you aren't happy, please, give me a chance to see if we can correct this for you."  That one sentence will calm down more people and give you a chance to fix the situation more than any other sentence in the world.  Doesn't matter if the customer is right or not, because believe it not, the customer is NOT always right, but they can still be upset, ticked off and ready to kill for whatever reason.  And while you may sit there and think to yourself, "Good Gawd, what is this person's problem?  It's not like it's a life altering mistake or problem?"  It isn't, you would be right, but what you, as the employee on the other end of that rant must remember is that you have no idea what lead up to that moment in time for that person.  They may be having one of the worst days of their lives and had absolutely no control over any of it, the car got a flat, the boss was in a foul mood, the coffee spilled all over their new outfit, the traffic was horrific on the way home, the dog peed on the new carpet (okay, that one they can control if they crate the dog or put a diaper on it while they are gone, like I do with Lolli) but the point is they got home or they stopped in your store, already in a bad mood and guess what?  You didn't do the job they expected you to do!  So guess who is going to get an ear full?  Yep, you got it right.  You.  And you will take it unless of course they become abusive and start making personal attacks, then you have a right to ask them to keep the problem to the matter at hand or you will have them removed.

Anyway, back to the matter at hand, don't tell me you can't apologize because YOU didn't do anything wrong.  Of course you didn't and you aren't apologizing for yourself, you are apologizing for the company you work for!  You may even agree with the customer but by apologizing you are acknowledging that you heard them, understand they are upset and will do your best to help them get a resolution to their problem.

But let me give you another hint.  When the first words out of your mouth to me do not include an apology, you better be ready for round two of my wrath.  Apologize and I will calm down immediately, don't apologize and I will continue to get even more angry.  Will it be right for me to stay angry?  Probably not but you had an opportunity to stop me and chose to make excuses instead of really listening and trying to figure out how to fix the problem I am having.

One of the places I currently have a problem with is Tops Market on South Main Street, their grocery manager is about as worthless as they come.  There have been a couple of times I have had problems with either staff or something happened or I noticed something wrong and when I would go to the Grocery Manger he would basically blow me off every single time with excuses.  Twice I called back and talked to the General Manager who did finally apologize, after being prompted, but because of the poor management in that location I only go there for my prescriptions (the pharmacy guy Matt is awesome!) and if I really need something in a hurry since it is the closest large store and don't want to pay higher prices at the convenience store.  Otherwise I will drive the extra mile to get the kind of service I get at Wegman on Clemens Center Parkway.  The people are always helpful, listen to you, apologize if there are problems with one exception this morning, which prompted the initial blurb.  I had stopped at the customer service desk after checking out and was going to buy a lottery ticket, why not, you never know and I rarely play.  The girl behind the desk was on the other side by the bottle return and there were a few other management people there.

She came back around and stopped to talk to the management person.  Did not even acknowledge my presence at the counter.  I was patient, they were continuing a previous conversation so I could understand.  But after 30 seconds and she still never even looked at me and there were lags in the conversation when she could have quickly said, "I'll be right with you Ma'am." she did not so I turned to leave.  Only then did she say, "Ma'am, I can help you!"  My reply was, "No, that's alright, you look like you're busy and don't have time for customers." and I proceeded to walk out.  Now, I won't quit going there because of that but I can almost guarantee you she got in trouble after I left.  Nothing serious I'm sure but if someone didn't say something to her I would be very disappointed.

And one last  thing before I wrap this up and start a new post about my amazing daughters, when I send one of my children up to the counter to talk to you about a problem, don't ignore them or treat them like they don't count, because they do count, especially at the fast food places, because believe me when I say, if it wasn't for them I would not be there wasting my money, so if my child comes to you with a complaint, you best treat them with the same respect that you would if I was standing there letting you know I'm not happy because if I have to get up and help my child get your attention, it won't be you I'll be talking to, it will be your boss and I don't' have the nickname Terminator Queen cuz I like the movies....

1 comment:

  1. Who do the younger folks have as a model for appropriate customer service? probably not the cell phone and computer businesses they spend so much time using. Just wondering...
    joycets... boomer.

    ReplyDelete

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