Today’s SMH
If more companies are prepared to simply say sorry when they make a mistake, their dealings with customers will vastly improve, a new study says.
Aaaaah, the joys of customer service. Problem is, quite often it ’s hard to find a nice balance between service and servility in dealing with customer satisfaction. God knows they don’t appear to understand that fine distinction, and it’s my daily struggle as well.
Sybil: You never get it right, do you. You’re either crawling all over them licking their boots, or spitting poison at them like some benzedrine puff-adder.
Basil: Just trying to enjoy myself.
Heh! From the retailing POV things are becoming very demanding, customers simply won’t accept a simple human mistake and demand compensation of some kind or another for all sorts of reasons, hell, I once had a guy demand I pay for his parking ticket because the service provided apparently took too long………?
The shop counter is fast becoming a DMZ of human relationships. Despite the findings of the researchers, my long experience in retail is that sorry just doesn’t cut it with the customers any longer, they want their pony……now, and to hell with sorry.
SMH should say “sorry” for running the untruthful opinions of Carlton, Ramsey, McGeoch et al but they wont - only the classifieds are holding up the falling sales as unhappy customers shop elsewhere.
Rog, unfortunately the available alternatives involve either buying the Daily Terror (the Womans Weekly of newspapers), or a newspaper that publishes Janet Albrechtsen and Frank Devine on a regular basis.
Opinion is opinion. Every paper has its ideologues.
I wouldn’t worry. Soon the only opinions that will be publishable under law will be those of Bolt and Ackerman.
Philip Adams better have another job lined up.
(And once the media laws are changed Murdoch will buy up Fairfax. It is inevitable.)
I remember a bookshop I once worked at where all the employees agreed that our job would be perfect, if only we didn’t have any customers…
Phil,
It’s a matter of training, and for this you need to join the public service. I was extensively and expensively trained in “dealing with difficult customers” - techniques such as the “broken record” where you just keep repeating your reply, or “fogging” where you don’t reply to their exact complaint but jump to slightly related things that you can safely blather on about …….. maybe you could just make a complaint at a government department to see the full repertoire.
I’m reminded of a scene from Black Books. Manny bets Bernard that he can recommend and sell a book to a customer who has just walked in to the shop.
Manny: Hello.
Customer (shouting): Will you leave me alone? I’m sick and tired of being hounded by salesmen in shops! I’m browsing, all right? Browsing! At the end of it, I might buy something, I might not, but you will not influence me one iota—not one jot! Now I’ve finished with you, you may go!
Funny.
I must say I find most service personnel agreeable, even if I’m complaining. But maybe it’s becase I try to do it in a way that doesn’t put them on the defensive.
As a public servant I once had a call from a woman who said she had been transferred 11 times when I told her I wasn’t the right person. So I said “That’s awful!”, took her query and tried to get the info and get back to her. Can’t remember how it all finished up.
Retail rage, akin to road rage. One mistake can drive (pardon pun) a person into a seething rage, from which they may not recover. From experience on both sides of the counter i can say it’s very dependent on time of day as to the reaction/help you may receive. Early morning directly after coffee the staff will be much more helpful, before the customers have had any chance to sully what would be an otherwise perfect day. Good call Mindy.