Bad customer service or just bad customers.

System

I had customers complaining yesterday as there were only 3 people serving and i was doing another role, (kind of a vital one cos without someone doing it we'd have no products to sell) and i had some dirty looks off people who couldn't understand why i wasn't serving them, later on when i was switched to the tills i got shouted out for us not having enough staff. I fully agree we didn't have enough, but we were one short as one guy was sent home sick and i have no control over how many staff we have rotaed on, thats a managment decision, so shouting at me (when i've already apologised for your wait and am trying to serve you as quick as i can) isn't going to help anyone.

i didn't even end up leaving work till a good hour and a half after my shift was supposed to have finished so yes i appreciate we needed more staff... !

Money-Saving-King

ThumbRemote wrote: »

This sounds like an appallingly badly managed store.

Why?

You don't know the staffing budget! Retail tends to have the thinnest margins of any business. That means staff will not be available on demand. It means training is very difficult to fit in.

If you can't relate to this then you're very lucky to have such an easy job! I bet you whatever industry Thumbremote is in has higher gross profit margins then Supermarket retail which can be lower than 3% or less. I bet by a mile whatever industry he is in isn't as competitive & therefore has such strict budgets.

PenguinJim

daytona0 wrote: »

Not going to call you a liar, but I would kill to see evidence o a website changing the address to something other than the one provided by the customer on checkout... I don't think I've ever once issued a goodwill gesture and I used to genuinely investigate them by going outta my way (you realise that there is no point in the end). These sites take 100s o orders each day and the wrong delivery address issue probably crops up once every 100 orders I'd say

There was an issue with the Shopto.net website about two-three years ago where a lot of orders were sent out to wrong addresses. Either old addresses that had been updated or "billing addresses" instead of "delivery addresses". This continued across many customers for a couple of months.

So it does happen.

(No problems with Shopto.net here, and they're one of my favourite online stores, so I'm not just having a go at them. But it was happening to too many people for it to be coincidence.)

ThumbRemote

Money-Saving-King wrote: »

Why?

From the post I replied to:
Long queue at the checkout
Times when there is known to be an even longer queue, and nobody does anything about it
Staff not till trained as there's no time to do it
Won't bring in staff to cover absences

Money-Saving-King wrote: »

You don't know the staffing budget! Retail tends to have the thinnest margins of any business. That means staff will not be available on demand. It means training is very difficult to fit in.

I am fully aware that any business that provides poor service to customers will eventually see them shopping elsewhere.

If three had phoned in sick would they just have left one in the shop? What about all 4, left the shop unstaffed? Sounds more like a lack of desire by the management to do anything to me.

Money-Saving-King wrote: »

If you can't relate to this then you're very lucky to have such an easy job! I bet you whatever industry Thumbremote is in has higher gross profit margins then Supermarket retail which can be lower than 3% or less. I bet by a mile whatever industry he is in isn't as competitive & therefore has such strict budgets.

You have no idea who I am or what I do, as I evidenced by this paragraph. But, like always, I'm sure you know better than anyone else on here about everything

System

Jo_F wrote: »

And then you have those that have an internet shopping only card so don't have a PIN. They get told on the phone and it's printed on the email that they need to card and the PIN!

We get so many of those its unreal !

System

xXMessedUpXx wrote: »

I had customers complaining yesterday as there were only 3 people serving and i was doing another role, (kind of a vital one cos without someone doing it we'd have no products to sell) and i had some dirty looks off people who couldn't understand why i wasn't serving them, later on when i was switched to the tills i got shouted out for us not having enough staff. I fully agree we didn't have enough, but we were one short as one guy was sent home sick and i have no control over how many staff we have rotaed on, thats a managment decision, so shouting at me (when i've already apologised for your wait and am trying to serve you as quick as i can) isn't going to help anyone.

i didn't even end up leaving work till a good hour and a half after my shift was supposed to have finished so yes i appreciate we needed more staff... !

We only have 4 tills and sometimes you get people in the queue loudly suggesting that we should have more staff working , im not sure how that would help when all tills are manned !

duchy

They could build you more tills maybe ?

ThumbRemote

Jo_F wrote: »

And then you have those that have an internet shopping only card so don't have a PIN. They get told on the phone and it's printed on the email that they need to card and the PIN!

So your store insists on a customer bringing a piece of information that doesn't exist - and this is somehow the customers fault?

BJV

daytona0 wrote: »

The rest o your post was good BUT...


I've heard that line a million times. Some customers make up lies example "I removed the old address" when you can clearly see that it remains the chosen deault address.

Not going to call you a liar, but I would kill to see evidence o a website changing the address to something other than the one provided by the customer on checkout... I don't think I've ever once issued a goodwill gesture and I used to genuinely investigate them by going outta my way (you realise that there is no point in the end). These sites take 100s o orders each day and the wrong delivery address issue probably crops up once every 100 orders I'd say

.

I did not place my order on line it was done via the telephone on my lunch at work. I gave them my address and paid via my card.


On the day the tiles where due to arrive I had a call from someone over 250 miles away very upset that two very large and very heavy pallets of tiles had been dumped on their drive away.


I was having a lot of work done and it was a big order of tiles. I had ordered them over 4 weeks before and arranged a special delivery date so that it would be easy to store them and my builders would be ready to use them.


To cut a long story short it appears that they ordered tiles from the same place the day I did. They had got their tiles ages ago. I do not know this person. They live in a part of the country I have never been to.


Sorry I think that this time it was a case of them making a mistake.


Please do not misunderstand I am human and OMG I make mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes so it is not the mistake I was upset and frustrated with it was how it was handled.

Jo_F

ThumbRemote wrote: »

So your store insists on a customer bringing a piece of information that doesn't exist - and this is somehow the customers fault?

Well if I was told that to complete the transaction and pick my goods up, I needed both the card and the PIN, then I would make sure that I actually used a card that I had a PIN for.

It's to protect people from fraud, you lose your cards in the street, someone goes on a jolly spending a fortune on stuff, they walk into the store to collect, if they don't have the PIN, they don't get the stuff, it's a simple as that, protects the card holder and protects us. Plus, how else are we going to know that we gave the items to the right customer?

If we didnt do this, customers would be the first to complain if we gave their items to someone else.