I think the last part of the last sentence is crucially important. Basic microeconomic principles suggest that a desire to gain and retain customers will lead companies to hire good workers and provide good service. Unfortunately, many companies, despite their advertising rhetoric, seem to have decided not to compete in the arena of service. This effectively leaves customers in the same situation as they would find under a cartel–suffering from a low, standardized level of service, with no alternative to the oligopoly.
No always. People pay more at, say, Nordstrom’s or Trader Joe’s because the service is better.
A funny story. When Trader Joe’s first opened in New York a few years ago, they brought over a bunch of California workers until the local staff was fully trained. The staff was so overwhelmingly friendly that it was culture shock to the New Yorkers. Many of them were sure that the staff was being sarcastic. This is not meant to be a slam on New Yorkers. Over there, they trade friendliness for efficiency. A very fair tradeoff in my opinion. Rude isn’t the problem. Rude and slow is.
Haj
I try to give good customer service, even though I’m not happy about my job. I don’t want to be in customer service.
I’m really really not happy with my job. I went to college and worked my ass off to improve my life. I spent six months aggressively looking for work. But for whatever reason this is the only job I could get. So now I spend all my time at a high-stress job- usually working until midnight or one o’clock, have no health insurance (the festering infection on my finger does take a bit of my cheery attitude, as do my aching budding wisdom teeth), live out of a suitcase and sleep on somebody ele’s couch, eat three peanut butter and jelly sandwiches a day (plus coffee and lentils when I have energy to cook), don’t have a set schedule or guarenteed hours (it’s hard to deal with steady expenses- like rent- when you never know if you are going to get a $400 paycheck or a $150 one) and I’m still loseing money every month on basic living expenses.
This is the direct result of the modern labor market. This is what happens when you ban unions. This is what happens when your companies are not based in the community, and have no ties to the community. This is what happens when you allow chains to put small businesses out of business. This is what happens when you abandon training, refuse to hire full time employees, create a disposable labor force and invest the bare minimum in your workers.
And fuck if I’m supposed to work my ass off for this. I’ll do my job. I’ll not get fired. But anything I do above the level of not getting fired is, by definition, what the market can bear. And if they only have to give me what the market can bear, why am I somehow magically obligated to give them more? They pay me what they pay me to do what I do and if they don’t like it they can fire me (just like if I don’t like it, I could theoretically get a different job- although in practice this hasn’t realy worked out). I know for a fact that no amount of effort on my part will lead to higher wages or a better position in this company, so why am I somehow obligated to do more than what they are giving me is apparently worth to them?
Not that I’m surly or mean. I’m actually really nice to my customers. They are the only thing in my job that isn’t completly monotonous and depressing. But it gets hard because often I honestly don’t have the power to help them as well as I could. As a result of this disposable labor force, most employers don’t even trust their employees enough to open their register and make change. I was given about two hours of training. Of course I suck at this job! Don’t blame me!
Meanwhile, there are plenty of things that customers do that make me not all that inspired to go out of my way for them. They talk on their cell phones when I’m trying to ring them up. Do you have any idea how insulting that is? They lie to me and try to scam me. They don’t look at me or speak to me when I ask them “And how are you today?”. They hit on me because they know I can’t do anything but stand there and smile. I’m sure you all are nice folks, but there are lots of people out there on power trips that get off on treating low-wage workers poorly. It happens, and it happens to me all day long, and it is disheartening and gets to you after a while
Especially true on a micro level. For example, in the town I work in there are five restaurants (not including fast food) in a very small area that service a pretty dense area of workers. Now, ideally, you’d think that they would compete in service because there are so many alternatives. But the thing is, most of them are at or near capacity in the first place on most weeknights, so even if they devoted extra resources to improving service they’d see no correlative gain for it. Hence, below average service (products themselves are roughly equivalent). Then you’d think, well someone should notice this and open their own restaurant in order to satisfy a need and make money at it. Well, ok, but how much more will you have to charge for your services in order to provide a significantly better level of service? And will this increased price itself be somewhat prohibitive to luring customers away? Can your area sustain that level of payment? Etc. And don’t even get started on local monopolies like home improvement centers, grocery stores, and WalMart types (Target,whatever). They have almost zero incentive to provide excellent customer service. Not that I think all these places are actually bad; on the contrary, I have no problem supporting them. They just don’t meet anything I would consider “good” customer service. The primary thing I see in competition is simply quality of product, not quality of service.
And really, doesn’t that make sense? Do I care if there is some snotty kid ringing up my DVD if I can save a few bucks on it? Not really.
Of course, no one is denying this. The question is whether there are enough people in most areas who can afford to pay more for it. Sorry, but the answer is simply “no.” Our OP is a perfect example, someone who longs for better service but cannot pay for it. I don’t really care about service, I care about the product. I guess you can blame me for not demanding better care. 
Hi sven! Hope school is going well for you. 
You know, and that’s funny, because I would probably be considered a screaming liberal. So I don’t think that’s it. I think the whole “don’t hurt the kids’ self-esteem” “every kid gets a blue ribbon” mentality is a lot of horseshit.
Yeah, but I’m not talking “back in the misted backwaters of ancient time when I was but a lass,” I’m talking ten lousy years ago. I’ve worked at pizza places of one kind or another more than I care to think about. Back when, I was on crews which worked great together, willingly put in extra time to keep the place looking nice…
Then again, come to think of it, the crews on which I worked which worked the best were those which had good managers. The people I’ve worked with since about 1995 haven’t given a rolling fuck about the employees…and it’s usually because Corporate’s policies don’t allow for it.
Maybe minimum-wage workers have become so incredibly fucking expendable - especially with college graduates competing fiercely for secretarial jobs - that doing a better job for no recognition or props AND the same probability of being canned just holds no interest.
I don’t know. Reading this thread has made me think more about it, though. What would be necessary to put a decent work ethic and, failing that, decent morale back into the lower-wage workforce?
A lot of the problem with “customer service” isn’t really customer service. It’s a combination of soulless capitalism and overinflated expectations.
Let me explain: I work in customer service in a call center, first as a representative and now as a supervisor. I did my damnedest to do a great job. I was consistently praised by both staff and customers. However, every week or so, I’d have a customer who told me I was giving him/her horrible service and that I was a bad employee. Here’s why: people don’t always get what they want, and they blame customer service.
Now, I will say that, for my company, we try to have policies that are flexible. Representatives and supervisors have a lot of leeway. However, one person called up and essentially wanted to be extremely rude to the person while placing an order – to the point of calling him names for absolutely no reason and saying “I’m a customer, if you want my business, then deal with it”. The representative, who was new, started to get upset and since I was walking by I went ahead and took the call. Essentially she just wanted to insult me, too. She said our prices were too high and wanted a discount because she was a “good customer”. (Actually, she had bought one item from us in the past. She wasn’t happy with it and we sent her out two free items. She returned the product anyway and kept the free stuff. Not a good customer at all.) I explained that our prices are set. She proceeded to berate me for how horrible my service was, how stupid I was, et cetera. I took the order as quickly as possible. As I gave her the total, she cried out “That’s OUTLANDISH!” I said, “I’m sorry, ma’am, but that is your total. Would you like me to still place the order for you?” She responded with “Yes, but you have to admit, you’re not giving very good service! You’re not pleasant at all!” (through gritted teeth) “Ok, I’ve placed the order. Is there anything else I can help you with?” “No, but I want to say about your service–” I finally just hung up on her. Sorry, ma’am, you’re not getting a discount by being a huge bitch.
This sort of thing happens a lot. I’m flexible, and when a customer is not trying to take advantage I will go as far as I can to help. But, if you find three empty bottles of medication and want to return them a year later because you didn’t like them – no, the guarantee is 2 months, not indefinite. If you are moving out of your house and find an unused, expired package from 3 years ago and that’s all you ever ordered from us – no, you don’t get to return it. If you’ve never ordered from us and are obviously calling to scam me by saying that your “friend” who orders from us “all the time” )but for whom you don’t know his last name or address) is upset with our service and wants a box of free product to “compensate”, well, sod off.
On the other hand, there are just companies that suck. cough, Chase Manhattan I dealt with a credit card company that failed to send me statements, then – when I sent payment – returned the payment as they couldn’t find my account without the statement, then attemptd to charge me late fees up the ass. I finally left feedback on PlanetFeedback.com and a variety of other places, and a resolution specialist contacted me who admitted that 1) the first statement hardly ever arrives (when I had been told repeatedly that it was my fault or, worse, insinuated that I was a liar) and 2) my account was incredibly difficult to locate, even using my account number, name, address, and social security number for some nebulous reason (when I called customer service several times and was told I had no account with them because my card number wasn’t in their system). I’m still in the process of having them refund all of the fees, but the service I got was absolutely abysmal, with a supervisor who told me that the situation was entirely my fault and that I would never get refunded for fees, and that their statements were not returned and so I was liable because they had to have arrived, et cetera. I had collections calling me daily and who kept calling me at work despite my repeated requests NEVER to call me at work, and who were told the payment was already sent! (It was, but despite a complaint letter and two phone numbers, it was simply returned telling me that I didn’t have an account with the information I gave, even though I did.) Urgh. However, despite two really rude supervisors, the ground level representatives were very friendly – they were just tied up with stupid policies. They can’t refund fees if the account is overdrawn, even if it’s overdrawn by fees; this caused more and more fees to pile up, but they could only refund 1 overdraft and 1 late fee regardless of this. Corporate bullshit, basically. I tried to be as reasonable as possible and only really got upset with the supervisors who tried to berate me for being a deadbeat.
For all of that, it wasn’t that there were young people who just do a crappy job and don’t care. Quite frankly, I find that notion rather offensive - if you’re told that a representative isn’t allowed to do something, but you blame that representative for ‘not caring’, I think you’re mistaking where the blame lies. As was said before, it’s a cultural issue. People usually look for price and not service. I’m learning to prize service first and ending up paying less in the long run due to less screw-ups, and having less stress in the process.
I think erislover answered this well. I never meant to imply that lack of competition was universal, only that it seems to be reasonably common in certain sectors.
On an unrelated issue: Do people really pay more at Trader Joe’s? I go to the one here in Baltimore because the prices are generally cheaper than for equivalent stuff elsewhere. I get organic tofu for $1.29, and i can’t find it anywhere else for less than $2.40. Sure, there is more expensive stuff as well, but i still find it’s usually cheaper at Trader Joe’s than it would be somewhere else.
For the record, while I do not enjoy customer service jobs, I have never once to my knowledge been outright rude to a customer. I show up on time, do my best at my job, give extra when I can and pick up slack for others when they need it. When a corporate policy prevents me from giving the customer what they want, I explain it the best I can and I sympathize.
“Find a job in another field” eh? Well shit, I didn’t know it was that easy. I have applied for non-customer-service jobs many times. Even when I was already employed, I was trying to get jobs that better suited my skills – but places like UPS and FedEx, who were advertising positions loading boxes onto trucks, never even bothered to call me. Meanwhile, I’m living in one of the most expensive areas in Southern California because I’m attending college here. I’d just better suck it up and live on the street, eh? Oh that’s right, the police around here would pick me up in half an hour if I tried that.
I do not take my frustration out on customers. I give the best customer service I possibly can. But I did not have a choice about the jobs I got. Early-twenties college students with no manufacturing training and no completed degrees are very limited as to who will hire them.
Probably a GD thread, but I’ll answer this. I’m one of the “Just don’t get fired” types. Here’s what you could do to make me work better.
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Get rid of the shitty people-When I worked retail, we’d get people who would offend the customers. We’d get people who’d look at porn at the customer service desk during slow times. We’d get people who’d work the register at a snail’s pace. The managers would bitch, but would never do anything about them. My attitude was, “If they’re not gonna fire the guy who looks at porn, they’re not going to fire me.”
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Take out all the robot shit-At my job, they were busy trying to get us all to smile and follow our little scripts, like “Thank you for calling Soulsuckers, Inc. blah blah blah, How can I help you?” or “Before I ring you up, we’re having specials on X, Y, and Z.” Yea, it may help sales, but someone who’s good with people and someone who’s terrible with people can both recite the same script. While we’re at it, let’s cut out all the artificial cheerfulness/forced joivality. If you want cheerful people, hire them. In my experience, customers were concerned with finding the item they were looking for, not you trying to be their best buddy (because most of them KNOW we’re required to do this anyway). People get sick of acting like robots.
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Pay something decent. If you want me to work better, pay me. Incentive bonuses would be great. An actual living wage would be better. How cheerful am I going to be working for pennies when I’ve got rent coming up and a car payment due? Oh, I forgot, it’s SO SUPER EASY to get another job! Shit, if I’d been paid enough to live on working full time, I would’ve been one loyal, super employee. I liked my job. But not enough to kill myself for it.
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Managers. I’ve had good ones and I’ve had bad ones. The good ones all came from outside the company. The bad ones were all promoted from within. The one trait those promoted from within shared was they had all been there X amount of time. Make promotion mean something, not just a matter of surviving long enough to get promoted. And quit promoting assholes or those who kiss ass enough to get promoted. Honestly, I’d like to see employees have a say of some kind. We all knew who’d be good and who wouldn’t (or had an idea, at least), though upper management seemed to blunder on, clueless.
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Corporate. Corporate policies sailed around like a ship wandering the Caribbean. One month, we would be able to, say, ship things to your house for an extra fee. The next, we’d stop it altogether. The next, we’d do it only if you asked nicely. The next, no, noway, nohow. And then who gets the blame, the morons in the office, or the people out on the floor?
6 Reward the people who work hard. At my job, you could bust your ass or you could work just enough to not get fired. The people who worked hard got just the same. In fact, they were worse off, cause doing more work just got you more work with no reward.
I think these two things go together. At least in my experience, the people who are forced to deal with all the practicalities of an implimented decision are the exact people who would have the most useful input and the exact people who aren’t asked at all. Customers are polled, and management makes decisions, yet neither have piss-all to do with actually implimenting anything. Labor is like a black box to them. I am the only person who does service in the company, and one of only two people who have my background. Yet when design time comes around, who gets to have an input? Not me. Yet who has to deal with the poor design? Me. Who has to deal with the customers bitching about the poor design? Me.
The solutions companies come up with always seem to revolve around, “What can we order our grunts to do in order to increase revenues?” rather than, “What can we do for our employees to ensure they work their best?”
Eeeeexactly. If you expect the best, you’d better give the best.
Man, this is a fucking depressing thread.
Same here. In the example I was thinking of, the managers decided to promote a guy who was known for sitting in the stockroom with his feet on the desk and sleeping. They spent the next year and a half being shocked, SHOCKED when they found him back in the stockroom, feet on the desk, sleeping. And he was soundly disciplined…No, wait, no he wasn’t. He was left alone until he transferred to another store, where he may be sleeping in their stockroom.
That had to be super motivating! 
I have arrived at the conclusion that the reason the American Work Ethic[sup][sub]TM[/sub][/sup] has declined, especially in the area of customer service, is because management in large American companies not only does not value a strong work ethic, but actually discourages it. Witness the diligent employee who is written up for asking a coworker t cover for her while she goes to the break room to get some water to wash down aspirin to cure her headache, while coworkers who regularly vanish from their desks for a half hour at a time to take unauthorized “smoke breaks” don’t get so much as a verbal warning. (Actually happened to my mother)
Witness the employee who, after being repeatedly commended (sometimes even in writing) while working for a company that is well known in the industry for their high standards of customer service doesn’t make probation at her next job because she “is not meeting the standards of service” in a casino where half her coworkers are deliberately uncooperative, rude to customers, and perform their jobs with considerably less skill (happened to me, twice.)
Witness employers who have policies that make it impossible for their “customer service” people to provide any decent standard of service.
Witness employers who “reward” employees who get written comments from customers about how wonderful and helpful they are by giving them a stupid pin instead of, oh, a raise, and continue to pay them at the same rate as the people who just don’t give a fart.
Witness employers who pay wages so low a single person with no kids can barely scrape by, and then treat the workers like subhumanoids, rather than pay their workers at a rate that would enable them to attract and retain good people who actually cared about the job.
It has been my experience, as well as my mother’s, that employers will discipline a worker who works hard, goes the extra mile, and strives to do an excellent, rather than just an OK job more severely for less serious offenses than they do the slackers.
I think it’s a cost-saving measure. If companies rewarded workers who worked harder and better by giving them better pay and benefits, then maybe other employees would start working harder and better, in anticipation of similar reward. This, of course, would drive up payroll costs, and, well, we can’t have that now, can we?
Meanwhile, the customers bitch about the lousy service after waiting in line at the checkstand for a half hour or more, while they continue to fork over their money for the shoddy merchandise they’re buying for always low prices always.
It’s not like the management doesn’t encourage it. I got huge kudos just for showing up on time and not calling in all the time (not that I didn’t call in, I did, but I didn’t do it a lot). I was shocked!
Actually, I read a fabulous article on Salon calledWe Don’t Support That. While it’s tech support, the attitude of management in the story is, well, exactly what I’m talking about. (I don’t know if this is a Premium article or not).
See?!
A few more thoughts on this endlessly depressing, yet critical subject.
Like someone said previously, I’m looking at the downhill slide I’ve seen in employers in my own lifetime (I’ve been working for a living for 19 years now). When I was employed straight out of high school, I was treated well by my employers, and gave them respect in return. Now, I am treated like a disposable employee or piece of warm furniture, and give them the bare minimum in return.
As an example of how toxic the work environment has become, I was talking with a lady who works with a local utilities company. She said that she has been told (herself, not second-hand) that the company expects all employees to be actively looking for other work so they are not so crushed if they are unexpectedly layed-off in the next round of capricious lay-offs. They re-organize this company constantly, so no one has any sense of continuity or safety, and from her description, they’re not particularly careful to match managers to departments. Her department (Records) has never had a manager who was trained in managing records.
As for some ways to reverse this trend, I would have to say that nothing will change until making more money is not the only goal of any company.
Yeah, but the problem with that is, people who will do what you described tend to have a certain amount of chutzpah, which managers often interpret as assertiveness. Good workers often don’t think they’re good enough, and if they don’t project confidence in their own abilities, managers will similarly doubt their worth.
Yeah, Trader Joe’s is usually cheaper up here, too. I think people may get the idea that it’s an expensive store from the merchandise they carry. They carry more healthy stuff which is more expensive in general. As far as their individual prices go though, they’re a great deal cheaper than other stores such as Raley’s and Valleregas.
That’s why I shop there. 
I have observed, when working for large organizations, that the best workers are not the ones who get promoted. Instead, the bullshitters and ass-kissers get the promotions. I know one reason for this - if I’m the best, fastest damn cook in the restaurant, I’m more valuable cooking than I would be sitting in the office doing paperwork.
Ah, I have another reason for the decline of the work ethic, courtesy of my girlfriend.
The store she works in doesn’t have enough people working at any one time, so they have to page for help/assistance when lines get too long (or whatever). They do this a lot, because they don’t have enough people. Management’s solution?
They can no longer page “Assistance to…”, because then people might think they’re understaffed. Instead, they have to page with numerical codes (“222, 222”). That way, people won’t know they’re understaffed.