Mooted: Customer Service Is A Privilege, Not A Right

Great Debates
21

[QUOTE=msmith537]
Most stores cannot continue providing poor customer service and hope to stay busy and popular for very long.
[/QUOTE]

I hear this a lot around here, but. . . is it really true? At ALL? The Waltons and their ilk are driving poor/cheap service all the way to the bank. Our local Best Buy, Target, Home Depot, etc, are all staffed by unwashed buffoons who only have a 50/50 shot of speaking comprehensible English; yet, they are packed every time I’m in there. Price matters to us-- Customer Service is just something we like to complain about.

22

[QUOTE=msmith537]
Well, good for them. Unfortunately you have it backwards though. CUSTOMERS are a privilege not a right. Most stores cannot continue providing poor customer service and hope to stay busy and popular for very long.
[/QUOTE]

Wrong. Somewhere in the detrious of the inflation-ridden 70’s, we as a society lost any appreciation for anything except price, and, on occasion, a poorly defined concept called “value.” Exhibit A is Wal-Mart.

The response to the OP is simply this: You as a consumer should expect exactly what you are willing to pay for, no more, no less. That sounds a bit clinical, and it is. In a society run by the concept that profit is the reward for proper mercantile behavior, service has a value, and willingness to pay for that value is paramount in determining what service you can expect. If you are not willing to pay for service, you won’t get service, in the long run.

As an example: suppose you are in the market for some clothes. You need a good outfit to wear to a wedding. Where do you go to shop for that outfit? Do you go to a store where the salespeople are knowledgable and willing to wait on you, ask you questions, bring you suggested items, run back and forth to and from the dressing room, etc.? Or are you going to go to a store and, whenever approached by sales staff mumble that you are “just looking,” prod and poke around the sales racks, leave a mess in the dressing room for someone to clean-up, and then return half of what you buy after taking it home for trial? Which behavior do you think commands a higher price? Which are you willing to pay for?

I recall one time when I was a very young lad, in the 60’s, shopping with my grandmother in Marshall Fields. THE Marshall Fields, now, unfortunately, a Macy’s. She needed ladies gloves. We worked with one sales lady for 30 min. to get the right pair, exactly what Grandma wanted, fitting well, feeling good, and looking smart. Cost of the purchase at the time? Cannot recall, but certainly it was not tremendous, so the sales lady wasn’t making beaucoup commission off that 30 min. But the price was sufficient to encourage the treatment, included the cost of that treatment in its calculation, etc. The sales lady was happy to help, knowing that next time, Grandma might just as well spend $500 on multiple items, brought back to the store and that sales lady by the experience with the gloves.

Almost no place in America where that sort of service is available any more. Why? Because we hate paying for it. The biggest retailer in the world has become the biggest by advertising that it has the lowest prices ALWAYS. Inherent in that claim is an acknowledgment that they don’t offer jack for service, because service costs money and that increases prices. And like sheep led to the slaughter, Americans dive though their doors in droves, willingly purchasing everything from food to lightbulbs to underwear to electronics for no other reason than the price of the merchandise.

If you feel you don’t get the service you want from a retailer, the solution is simple: shop where you get better service. Be prepared to pay for that service. Otherwise, shet your pie hole and accept that the person responsible for the crappy service you got was you. :wink:

23

[QUOTE=msmith537]
The problem is that that a significant number of retail customer service jobs are performed by young kids and/or retards who are unemployable in higher paying jobs. They don’t want to be there and they have a sense of entitlement that they deserve money are are doing the business and it’s customers a service by simply showing up.
[/QUOTE]
Yes, well, and why do you think that this is true? It’s because, while you want better service, you aren’t shopping where it can be found. Instead, you want to get all that service at no cost. Well, no cost means low wages, low wages means workers who aren’t as professional. It’s really quite simple.

There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.
Time we started paying attention to that fact. :smack:

24

The problem is that people expect customer service and they expect not to pay for it.

Customer service is WORK. It’s not easy to smile all day. It’s not easy to be polite and patient. It’s not easy to know exactly how attentive people want you to be. It’s easy to prioritize customers- especially when your store (like most chains) is understaffed. It’s not obvious how to handle things like disabled customers, irate customers, children, etc. Providing excellent customer service is a skill that requires training and experience to get right. And to get people with those skills costs money. But when customer service pays minimum wage and offers no chance of ever making more, everyone in that profession is going to be doing their level best to get the hell out of it.

When I worked in customer service, I felt more than anything like a hooker, because my job was to stoke people’s egos just the right amount, smile and look pretty, and deal with their shit no matter how wierd or unpleasant they were. And a good number of people in this world do kind of, and take joy in making customer service worker’s life difficult because they know they are paid to sit their and smile even if they are being harrassed, sexually harrassed, or whatever. I was good at customer service, but there is no way I will ever do it again voluntarily. Not enough money for the work you do.

Anyway, the prevailing attitude seems to be that providing good customer service is your “job” or even your “duty”, even if you are getting paid minimum wage and your managment couldn’t care less what you do. Whereas in most jobs we don’t expect people to do much more than the market dictates, with customer service people act as if service workers are required morally to go the extra mile and do not consider “I’m not paid to do that” to be a valid thing to say (whereas if you asked your mechanic to, say, vacuum your car while doing an oil change, you probably wouldn’t object if she said “no, I’m not paid to do that”).

In short, if you are sick of being served by undereducated gruff pimply kids, don’t get angry at those kids. Get angry at the stores that hire them.

25

[QUOTE=Obsidian ]

I hear this a lot around here, but. . . is it really true? At ALL? The Waltons and their ilk are driving poor/cheap service all the way to the bank. Our local Best Buy, Target, Home Depot, etc, are all staffed by unwashed buffoons who only have a 50/50 shot of speaking comprehensible English; yet, they are packed every time I’m in there. Price matters to us-- Customer Service is just something we like to complain about.

[/QUOTE]

You are correct. Given the choice between low price and decent service, most people will choose price. People will also generally chose “close” over customer service.

But the service at the Best Buys and Circut Cities is generally adequate. No, it may not cator to your bigotry, but the stores are generally clean and the staff are generally polite, if somewhat dimwitted.

Yes, that’s what they pay you to do. You stand at the counter, act polite and put up with their shit until they buy something.

I still think you have it backwards though. A jerk is not going to act like less of a jerk if you pay them more. If you’re the kind of person who says “what do you expect…look what I’m paid” you will always provide shitty service because you will never be paid enough.

The Banana Republics and Brooks Brothers and Nordstroms of the world do provide a higher level of service because people are not going to buy $200 sweaters or $1000 suits from someone who acts like an asshole. If you’re buying your suit from a bin, you don’t care about service.

26

[QUOTE=msmith537]
Yes, that’s what they pay you to do. You stand at the counter, act polite and put up with their shit until they buy something.
[/QUOTE]

But in actual reality, that just isn’t true. They pay service workers to take your money and put it in the cash drawer. If you fuck that up, you get fired. They do not pay you to provide exemplary service, and if you fuck that up you probably won’t be fired. That’s how the market economy works.

Anyone who does more work than they are paid to do in a job with no chance for advancement and offers no personal or monatary satisfaction is an idiot and does not know how to make good use of their personal resources.

And I think room for advancement is a major problem here. Most service jobs now rely on transitory labor, which only works in a single place for a few months before they quit or are fired. And endless supply of new workers- who probably recently quit or were fired from similar jobs- are there to take their place. Low level managment offers few benefits (where I worked you got a $1.00 an hour raise for about five times the responsibility, lots of unpaid hours, and a greater chance of being fired- only a fool would accept that promotion) and all real managment (the people who get salaries and benefits) were hired from outside. There was no internal promotion. Nothing. You can work there for twenty years and be the best they’ve ever seen, but you will never be more than a video store clerk.

This has two effects. The first is that workers have no motivation to do more than the bare minimum- as well they should. The intellegent person in that situation would put all their energy into finding a better job or getting job training. We did just that- there was a stage when people at my video store asked everyone who came the counter if they had a business that was hiring and wanted good workers- a strategy that landed quite a few of us better jobs, I might add.

The second is that employees arn’t trusted. This means often they simply do not have the power to make good service happen. Because of rampant employee theft (a result of transitory labor practices) employees arn’t trusted to do even basic things. I would love to make change for you, but I’m not allowed to open my cash drawer without a transaction. I would love to give you that refund, but you are going to have to wait for the manager. I would like to compensate you or fix your mistake or whatever, but if I do I’ll get fired.

Finally, a transitory labor force means that training is non-existant.

In order to attract and retain skilled employees, companies need to offer training, offer room for advancment, offer motivation to stay with the company (often money) and generally make working there not a total waste of your time to be gotten out of as soon as possible.

27

Anyone who does their best at ANY job, regardless of “advancement opportunities” or “monetary satisfaction” is a decent human being with some concept of personal responsibility. We know who the idiot is. :rolleyes:

28

[QUOTE=even sven]
But in actual reality, that just isn’t true. They pay service workers to take your money and put it in the cash drawer. If you fuck that up, you get fired. They do not pay you to provide exemplary service, and if you fuck that up you probably won’t be fired. That’s how the market economy works.

[/quote]

That clearly has nothing to do with a market economy.

Here’s how it works. I run a Starbucks or Gap or whatever. There are a hundred broke high school or college kids with no real skills who are eager to make a few extra bucks for beer and gas money. I can hire someone who is pleasent and jazzed up to have a little money in their pocket, or I can hire some malcontent who thinks he’s doing me a favor by coming into work. Who do you think I’m going to hire?

What’s so hard about keeping your mouth shut and just doing your job of putting money in a register with a minimum of screw-ups?

I know guys making six-figure salaries who still have the same “extra work is for suckers” attitude of entitlement.

People’s attitudes and behaviors don’t change. If you are a slacker because you have a dead-end minimum wage job, I’d be willing to bet that you are also a medicore student because the teacher doesn’t “challenge you”. You’ll probably grow up to be one of those guys working in some crappy cubicle farm who constantly complains about their boss, the jerk.

You know the reason you do a good job, even if the job sucks? It’s so that when you finally get off your ass and look for a better job, you have a good reference.

Your boss didn’t crush your dreams of wealth and success. He’s just some guy paying you to do a job.

29

[QUOTE=msmith537]

Here’s how it works. I run a Starbucks or Gap or whatever. There are a hundred broke high school or college kids with no real skills who are eager to make a few extra bucks for beer and gas money. I can hire someone who is pleasent and jazzed up to have a little money in their pocket, or I can hire some malcontent who thinks he’s doing me a favor by coming into work. Who do you think I’m going to hire?

[/QUOTE]

You’re assuming here that you’re paying enough to get the jazzed up ones walking in your door for work. If the amount you need to charge for coffee at your Starbucks to maintain a healthy balance between customers walking in an money in your pocket means you can only pay a pittance to your baristas, the jazzed up ones will find better paying work elsewhere, leaving you to hire the dregs.

THAT’s the market economy at work.

30

[QUOTE=msmith537]
You know the reason you do a good job, even if the job sucks? It’s so that when you finally get off your ass and look for a better job, you have a good reference.

[/QUOTE]

References barely mean jack anymore.

Lessee, current job. The admin staff where I have now worked for four years has seen 75% turnover in that time. A new potential boss looking for a reference could probably get verification of employment, but nothing beyond routine review paperwork in terms of actual information on how I did my job.

Previous job, worked one year in a college office to defer tuition expenses. Worked my ass off. They loved me. A month before the job ended because my student status did, the department got a new boss. We got along well, but a future HR department would be talkng to a man who knew me for all of three weeks.

Previous job, worked 3.5 years. Every single person I worked with has left. The head of the department, the last one who might remember me, died of a brain tumor last fall. Again, employment and general satisfaction of work requirements could be verified, but nothing to indicate my hard work and dedicated attitude.

Previous job, worked three years, ended when I moved. I still talk to my old boss, who doesn’t work there anymore. If I lost track of her, no one back at that job would ever even have heard of me.

Job before that, worked one year, was highly praised by my boss, but she threatened me on the phone when I let her know I was seeking a different opportunity. No reference there, and she’s retired anyway.

Job before that, retail. Worked for a franchisee. Company bought out all the franchised stores, I’m sure they have no record of me, and I don’t know where my old boss is now.

Job before that, also retail. Entire chain went bankrupt.

That’s about fifteen years of employment where I did nothing but impress the shit out of my superiors, and I’ve got some moldy paperwork in a few strangers’ files as a result. Would it really have made a difference if I’d just been half-assed all that time?

31

Not to mention that a lot of companies have a policy now to only confirm dates of service when called for a reference, in order to forestall lawsuits from former employees.

32

[QUOTE=jayjay]
Not to mention that a lot of companies have a policy now to only confirm dates of service when called for a reference, in order to forestall lawsuits from former employees.
[/QUOTE]

In New York State, at least, it’s actually against the law for them to say anything else.

33

[QUOTE=msmith537]

Here’s how it works. I run a Starbucks or Gap or whatever. There are a hundred broke high school or college kids with no real skills who are eager to make a few extra bucks for beer and gas money. I can hire someone who is pleasent and jazzed up to have a little money in their pocket, or I can hire some malcontent who thinks he’s doing me a favor by coming into work. Who do you think I’m going to hire?
[/QUOTE]

Turn it around. I’m a high school kid with no real skills who needs a few extra bucks for beer and gas money. I can go work somewhere where they expect me to put on my pieces of flair and do a silly dance whenever the customer says ‘get jiggy’, or I can work somewhere that pays the same without the bullshit because they’re so big and powerful any loss of profit because I don’t have my best shit-eating grin on is meaningless to them.

See, if your scenario had anything to do with reality, then why do all the sullen kids have jobs? Why does this thread exist at all, since your brilliant market has already solved the problem so well? Because it’s not a character fault in the workers that leads them to fail to live up to your beautiful Puritanical vision of people giving away labor for free out of the goodness of their hearts (or because they have psychotic visions of a world in which “valued employee” isn’t just a way of jerking around people until you downsize them).

34

[QUOTE=scotandrsn]

References barely mean jack anymore.

[/QUOTE]

You know what I do after I interview a candidate? I talk to anyone in my office who might have worked with them at the same previous employer. “Hey! I have this guy who was at [insert company] the same time as you! Did you know them?” I don’t make my decision based on that, but if I’m on the fence about hiring them and my staff tells me that person was a jerkoff, what do you think will happen?

At the professional level, industries are a lot smaller than you might imagine.

35

[QUOTE=msmith537]
I don’t make my decision based on that, but if I’m on the fence about hiring them and my staff tells me that person was a jerkoff, what do you think will happen?
[/QUOTE]

That you’ll make your decision off of that, which you just said you don’t do?

And how many times has this actually happened to you as an employer?

36

[QUOTE=scotandrsn]
That you’ll make your decision off of that, which you just said you don’t do?

And how many times has this actually happened to you as an employer?
[/QUOTE]

I don’t make my decision JUST based on what someone else said. It depends on the individual making the statement as well as my own observations during the interview.

As for the number of times it’s happened? Many. In the past three years at my company, I can think of a dozen instances where someone knew someone else from somewhere else on an interview, at a client, or at a competitor. When I interviewd at my current job, there were two people there I had known from a previous employer as well as a guy I went to college with. The consulting industry gets to be a very small place, even in New York, since everyone is from the same schools or all worked at the same big firms at one point or another.

37

[QUOTE=Obsidian]
The Waltons and their ilk are driving poor/cheap service all the way to the bank. Our local Best Buy, Target, Home Depot, etc, are all staffed by unwashed buffoons who only have a 50/50 shot of speaking comprehensible English; yet, they are packed every time I’m in there. Price matters to us-- Customer Service is just something we like to complain about.
[/QUOTE]
If you run a gigantobox store, you can get by with minimal customer service. If you have a smaller operation, you can either offer something WalMart et al do not have (service), or go broke trying to match their prices and crappy service.

If the perceived attitude toward customers is “Don’t bug me, son”, online shopping will start replacing walk-ins.

A lot of people still have this medieval idea that the shopper and salesperson are not on a perfectly even footing. If you’re spending your hard-earned dough, the recipient had better make an effort to deserve it. I realize that a lot of posters have retail experience and semi-horror stories to tell, and don’t have anything invested in the business other than putting in their hours and getting their pay. Certainly there’s no excuse for giving a salesperson a ridiculously hard time.

But an owner or manager who has a lot at stake in the business’ success would have to cringe at some of the salespeople’s attitudes that appear here.

38

[QUOTE=Jackmannii]
But an owner or manager who has a lot at stake in the business’ success would have to cringe at some of the salespeople’s attitudes that appear here.
[/QUOTE]
Then said owner/manager would want to do something about that…say, pay their employees more than the absolute minimum required by law, treat them decently instead of fucking around with them for fun, provide training and opportunities for advancement (or at least raises) rather than getting rid of people in order to avoid paying higher salaries, etc., etc., etc.

Bad attitude and high turnover are not problems caused entirely by the worthless scum working today. Those problems are quite frequently (if not most often) caused by crappy treatment from employers. IME, of course.

39

[QUOTE=redtail23]
Then said owner/manager would want to do something about that…say, pay their employees more than the absolute minimum required by law, treat them decently instead of fucking around with them for fun, provide training and opportunities for advancement (or at least raises) rather than getting rid of people in order to avoid paying higher salaries, etc., etc., etc.

Bad attitude and high turnover are not problems caused entirely by the worthless scum working today. Those problems are quite frequently (if not most often) caused by crappy treatment from employers. IME, of course.
[/QUOTE]

Or just pay more to attract a better class of employee, rather than people who have to settle for low wages because of their inability to get work doing anything else.

Then you can be in a position to actually have consequences for providing lousy service, to keep your work force better. That is if lousy service is even costing you any money at all, which, in a Wal-Mart world, it clearly is not.

Actually, that’s not entirely the market’s fault. Good customer services enables you to charge more. Witness the car salesman, who acts like the best, if the most clingy and annoying, friend you ever had from the moment you set foot on the lot. The trouble with a lot of smaller merchants is that they treat their customers like crap and don’t particularly care about it. So the customer finally decides, “If I’m gonna be treated like crap, I might as well go to Wal-Mart and pay less for it.”

40

[QUOTE=msmith537]
I don’t make my decision JUST based on what someone else said. It depends on the individual making the statement as well as my own observations during the interview.

As for the number of times it’s happened? Many. In the past three years at my company, I can think of a dozen instances where someone knew someone else from somewhere else on an interview, at a client, or at a competitor. When I interviewd at my current job, there were two people there I had known from a previous employer as well as a guy I went to college with. The consulting industry gets to be a very small place, even in New York, since everyone is from the same schools or all worked at the same big firms at one point or another.
[/QUOTE]

So you’re not even talking about retail-level service. Different animal entirely, IMO.