Look, my job as a customer service representative is to
A: Check out customers in a timely and friendly manner
B: Check in and restock movies before movies get false charges
C: Participate in store organizational projects to keep the store running
My job as a hostess is to
A: Accept payments before people walk out without paying their checks
B: Greet and seat customers before they walk out without ordering
C: Help out the waitstaff by getting drinks, etc for customers
Somewhere between B and C in each of these jobs is “Random customer service tasks” such as finding movies on the shelf for people, getting extra cups of Ranch dressing, putting stuff on hold and generally going the extra mile.
What your missing here is that EVERY job has this thing called PRIORITIES. I’m sure yours does. Mine do, too. While these “going the extra mile” tasks do make a big difference in customer satisfaction, if people can’t pay their checks or get false charges on their accounts, heads are going roll. Instead of just one customer being a bit disappointed, there will be a whole store full of very angry customers.
While it’s nice to be able to fulfill that special request or go through the extra steps to make someone’s experience a good one, sometimes it just isn’t possible. Some customers will monopolize a single employee for ten or twenty minutes at a time. Some will want you to walk out on the floor and find every single movie in their list of twenty for them. Some will want something new everytime you return to their table to give them the last thing they asked for. And meanwhile a line of angry people are piling up.
What I’m trying to say is that there is stuff that is my job. Then there is stuff I can do if I have my first priorities taken care of. Then there are things that may be customer service related that arn’t my job at all. For example, I just plain can’t run out on the floor to hold a movie for you on a Friday night when there is a line of people out the door who I’d have to ignore for five minutes. I just plain can’t take your order because as a hostess I don’t have any sort of access to the placing orders system. And I can never do stuff like run to the bank to break hundred dollar bills or let you test out your DVDs on the security system TVs because that simply isn’t something I can do at all.
A customer service job is a complicated one that requires constant prioritizing, weighing of costs and attention to all your customers and co-workers. It is not simply “do whatever the customer asks you to”.
WalMart apparently feels that understaffing to the point that they cannot spend the amount of time to bag your stuff without their absolutly must-do tasks being neglected to the point of emergency. WalMart has therefore set up a system that is designed for customers to bag their own goods. If you do not like this, blame WalMart for not prioritizing customer service and not providing their workers with the resources needed to make you happy. Don’t blame the hapless clerk that just wants to deal with the twenty other people in line glaring at her.