Decline of costumer service

[Carabidae]

Is it just me or is customer service going downhill. It seems like everywhere I go now, lines are longer, there are less people working and waiting times are increasing. For example, went into a department store and there was no one in the department to be found, an item I wanted to purchase only had the display. It took 15 minutes to get someone and another 10 minutes for the person to go to the back to get one. When I purchased the item, there were at least 6 registers, but 1 person ringing up so it was another 15 minutes of waiting. It's not like this is a one time deal, it's happening more regularly now. There's also self checkout counters at grocery stores where the self checkout is open but only 1 checker, and people don't check themselves out very quick so theres massive backup. I've been to home depot where they don't even have a checker, only the self checkout. Sometimes that's ideal, but not always. Any opinions.

 

[jtr1962]

It's not you. I rarely see enough registers open at the local grocery stores any more. They usually seem to adjust the number of open registers so that you end up waiting for 10 to 15 minutes no matter how crowded the store is. I saw a commercial a few years ago where a cart was wheeled out of the store and everything was instantly scanned. I hope something along those lines comes to pass soon. To me being forced to wait to give someone your money is adding insult to injury. This is why I now buy practically everything except groceries online. If online groceries where cheap I'd buy those too.

And the lines at my grocery store pale to those at the local post office. If you're lucky it's an hour wait. Average is three hours. I've heard of people waiting all day (9AM to 5PM) and not being serviced. They were given a number and told come back next day. It's especially bad around the holidays. The line goes out the door 2 to 3 blocks down.

 

[parnass]

These days, I've observed more cashiers and store clerks who either were not taught or ignore basic rules of customer service. For instance, clerks and cashiers will interrupt other store personnel to ask a question or chat while the latter are helping customers.

Store clerks will abruptly interrupt serving a customer to answer a telephone call. Traditional rules of customer service mandate that the customer who took the effort to visit the store be given priority over phone customers.

Auto parts stores are a real treat if you want to wait for service.

 

[barkingmad]

Maybe the Internet and online shopping are partly to blame with bricks-and-mortar stores having to compete on price against lower cost online retailers?

 

[McGizmo]

I really think this can be explained with a simple phrase most are familiar with:
"You get what you pay for."

As merchandise is discounted and sold at tight and short margins, the overhead of the retail or wholesale outlet must be reduced as well. Wages with associated labor burden (labor burden itself growing and not trivial) must be cut as well. The HomeDepot here on Maui has a number of "self check out" stands where you can scan the barcodes your self and swipe your card and leave without ever interacting with any HomeDepot employee.

I managed a retail chandlery for years and we were known in the boating community for having skilled and knowledgeable clerks. When the discount marine store showed up in our area, it got to where customers would come into us, pick our brains and then leave on the note that they were going to "think about it". It became apparent that many of these folks would then drive to the other discount store and purchase based on what they had learned from us. We had to fine tune our niche and basically give up on selling the "easy" stuff. Since our chandlery also supported the boatyard owned by the same owner as the chandlery, we didn't have to reduce the caliber of employee to compete head to head with the discount store.

Now with the internet, the landscape has changed once again. Sales and Service has a higher price tag than just Sales alone. No surprise to me. :shrug:

 

[greenlight]

"Decline of costumer service"

halloween is pretty soon, so I hope they get better in your area.

 

[chmsam]

The privately owned company for which I work encourages our employees to stop what they are doing when a customer asks about a product. They are told to not simply tell the customer where the product is within the store but to actually walk the customer to that item. Also, our front end personnel are told to open another register if there are more than four customers in a line.

When a customer tells me that I don't have to walk them to the product I tell them that, yes, we do because not only do we want to stay in business but that this is the way we would want to be treated ourselves.

We regularly win all sorts of awards for customer service and other qualities of our operations. We also are very highly ranked as a company to work for.

Mostly we're proof that customer service is not dead everywhere.

 

[flashfan]

greenlight, I'm truly LOL!!! I'm surprised no one else mentioned the typo.

 

[ABTOMAT]

This apparent everywhere, for all the above reasons. But I think a large part of it is simply companies no longer care, and the customers don't care enough to shop elsewhere. It doesn't damage the bottom line to tell an employee to acknowledge the shopper's existence in the store.

Heck, I was in the Post Office a few weeks ago with some boxes, only one in the lobby, and the only open register has a clerk reading a "People" magazine. I stood there for 30 seconds before finally asking the woman how her article was. She answered "good" and "How are things with you?" I said "Well, I've been thinking about mailing some packages."

Anyone remember when good department stores would have floor walkers to direct and answer the customer's questions?

 

[WNG]

It's an epidemic!

Autozone, the friendly neighborhood autoparts strore...yeah, the level of aptitude has sadly fallen. A Manager couldn't read and understand a special offer they were running.

Pepboys is an experience in self torture if you try to get any service there. Attitude, negligence, and plain old lack of automotive knowledge. Had a mechanic yell at me for watching him work, another mounted a set of new tires and destroyed two hubcaps and tried to return the car to me with hubcaps from another car and hoped I wouldn't notice. WTF. And last and final time, I needed hard brake line, and they didn't even know what the difference was between SAE, METRIC, BRITISH lines. I had to go back there and find them myself!!

There is another cafe thread regarding USPS possibly stealing the OP's packages possibly from recognizing they are valuable lights. (No surprise since they can check the declared value and insurance purchased for it)
Well, my 'new' postal carrier is also of the LAZY variety. He also simply dumps the Missed Delivery postcard in my box instead of trying to deliver it. (Perhaps he doesn't even have it on him to save on having to carry it on his route)
How do I know? I'm home during the day currently. No door bell is buzzed.
And when the Priority Mail carrier delivers, he rings the doorbell, if you answer, he dumps the box on the ground at the front door of my condo building and forces me to come to him to sign and pick it up off the ground.

Is UPS any better these days? Hell no.
Missed a delivery, so I drove down to the UPS Customer Store at their terminal.
There was already a line of 5 people ahead of me. One guy retrieving the packages, while another stood around at the empty counter to accept packages. It took me standing there for 45 minutes before I got my shipment.
All this time, one customer dropped off two boxes to be shipped, and after that, the 2nd guy stood around, walked around, spoke to the security guard, came over to see how the 1st guy is doing. In the meantime, a queue of ~20 people formed behind me, going out the door. Everyone was wondering WTF!!
2nd guy didn't bother to take some of us off the hands of the 1st guy. But he did speak up loudly, "Don't worry about them, they can wait." This was a direct response to everyone's growing frustration.
He waited until it was 6pm closing time before he assisted. By this time, the fellow waiting behind me asked us in front of him if he could jump in front because his Zip rental car was due back in 5 minutes and it'll cost him a $50 penalty. I waited even longer than he did, so I couldn't relinquish my spot with good will and told him Sorry. I advised him to plead to the 2nd guy who isn't doing a damn thing, he might sympathize. My frustration was at its peak.
A girl in front me turned out to be a grad student who was supposed to have received a 1-day express delivery of some test equipment she must take with her to West Africa on a 9pm flight that night!
It was misaddressed, and she and fellow researcher waited at both addresses to catch the UPS driver. But somehow missed him. She was told to go wait at the truck depot to intercept the truck as he was still on his route.
Talk about a mess! I went off on a tangent with her problem, but the crux of it all was neither guy gave damn and it was business as usual.

Supermarkets, restaurants, fastfood chains, Home Depot, Lowes, Bestbuy,
online too (Buy.com).
It just goes on and on.

Retail customer service and retailer's rights of returns and warranties are more or less a North American exclusive. It's buyer beware everywhere else. And the trend has been our purchasing rights are being eroded to levels matching those of other regions. Final sales, no refunds, no exchanges, pawning off returned or refurbed goods as new....sad.
At least our (USA) credit card transactions are still pro-consumer when it comes to fraudulent, disputed charges, and services not rendered.
I discovered our friends in Canada have different policies and rights.
I wonder how long it'll be before they try to strip those from us as well.

 

[matthewdanger]

It really is getting bad. I am not so sure that it is the complete fault of the companies employing these people or more of an indication of the caliber of people this country contains right now. America is in trouble and its people prove it. However, the decline in CS certainly does have a lot to do with the top down attitud in many of these companies.

I have also noticed that customer service people seem to know less and less about the products they sell everyday. You can no longer call someplace and expect to get relevant information about a product. How can these places survive when the very people who are supposed to sell their products know nothing about them? I have actually had people decline to answer questions on the phone by saying "I don't know, I just answer phones here."

 

[ddgarcia05]

The privately owned company for which I work encourages our employees to stop what they are doing when a customer asks about a product. They are told to not simply tell the customer where the product is within the store but to actually walk the customer to that item. Also, our front end personnel are told to open another register if there are more than four customers in a line.

When a customer tells me that I don't have to walk them to the product I tell them that, yes, we do because not only do we want to stay in business but that this is the way we would want to be treated ourselves.

We regularly win all sorts of awards for customer service and other qualities of our operations. We also are very highly ranked as a company to work for.

Mostly we're proof that customer service is not dead everywhere.

You wouldn't happen to work for a company called "H-E-B"? I worked there for years and everything you stated is exactly like H-E-B.

 

[Carabidae]

It's an epidemic!
He also simply dumps the Missed Delivery postcard in my box instead of trying to deliver it. (Perhaps he doesn't even have it on him to save on having to carry it on his route)
How do I know? I'm home during the day currently. No door bell is buzzed.
And when the Priority Mail carrier delivers, he rings the doorbell, if you answer, he dumps the box on the ground at the front door of my condo building and forces me to come to him to sign and pick it up off the ground.

You know, I was having the same problem, so I had to keep driving to the post office to pick up my packages. When I asked the lady at the counter whats going on since I used to always get my packages, she just shrugged and looked concerened for about 2 seconds, then said I don't know sir. Same thing with the fex ed guy claiming no one was home when I was home during the times claimed by the driver to have come by. Sounds like you've had some fun experiences out there. Your car experience reminds me of the time a friend had an oil change and somone used an air wrench to tighten the oilpan bolt and stripped it. They tried to act like nothing happened and when confronted with it, they said they had nothing to do with it. It took a day of phone calls and letters to the corporate office just for them to fix it.

I have also noticed that customer service people seem to know less and less about the products they sell everyday. You can no longer call someplace and expect to get relevant information about a product. How can these places survive when the very people who are supposed to sell their products know nothing about them? I have actually had people decline to answer questions on the phone by saying "I don't know, I just answer phones here."

Thats one thing too, lots of this "not my job" and thats the end of it, no one bothers to go that extra mile anymore, if if they do, it's rare.

As stated before, the issue seems to be based on the fact that companies are not wanting to cut into profits or dissapoint shareholders due to the cost of payroll. I'm sure everyone knows about what circuit city has done twice now, laying off employees and hiring them back at minumum wage, earlier they simply let go employees earning commission. There is rapid decline of places where commission is no longer part of the worker wage, so the time and effort is no longer there. That's what seems to be a trend here with big retailers. Having family in retail whose been layed off, it seems that even higher end and managment jobs are being eliminated making 1 person doing the work where there was 4, and on top of that, getting rid of older employees and hiring younger and more inexperienced workers for cheaper. What I find ironic is that companies ignore the reality of inflation in terms of thier human resource, they want to ignore the fact that the cost of the human resouce also increases, but they refuse to let that affect the bottom line.

 

[jtr1962]

As stated before, the issue seems to be based on the fact that companies are not wanting to cut into profits or dissapoint shareholders due to the cost of payroll.

Or put another way, most of the new jobs added in recent years have been "McJobs". It's difficult for an employee to care when they're paid little, given no incentives for productivity, and can basically get laid off on a whim. Truth is I've stopped blaming most employees for their laid-back attitude. There is an old saying you get what you pay for. The funny thing is in certain jobs a good employee can have 5 times the productivity of a marginal one. It's a bargain to pay them even three times more. I also think in jobs where productivity can be measured directly paying by the piece instead of by the hour makes more sense, provided the rate per piece is high enough so that the average worker will make at least minimum wage.