A good friend of The Mad Bloggers posted this comment on one of our earlier posts about horrible customer service. We felt that this was too good to be buried a few pages back in a comment. Check it.
I recently went to a mini-mart to purchase one of my favorite drinks, a Starbucks Vanilla Frappuccino. After grabbing my drink I made my way to the checkout counter, contemplating the cold creamy delight that was destined to hit my pallet very soon, this is where I had a revelation. The “Lead Sales person”, (I call her this because it said so on her badge), grunts for my attention, not greeted, I guess this meant she was ready to ring me out. I gave her my credit card to purchase my drink and after it was all said in done I said, “Thank you” in which I received another grunt, which meant the transaction was over. The question I asked myself as I was walking out the door of the mini-mart was, when did we revert back to the Neanderthal-like style of customer service? And where is this coming from? This isn’t the first time I received this type of service (Dell), it’s just the first time I actually sat back and thought about it.
Before joining the military I worked seven years in the retail business, from crappy beginnings at CVS to not as crappy endings as a manager at the Electronics Boutique (now Gamestop a.k.a. EB). Through all of these very hard and frustrating times I’ve always maintained my quality of service from greeting to farewell, from old promotions to new promotions. I hated my jobs. I had nothing but clear and outright disdain for the task of pandering to the sometimes undeserving customer, but I knew if I did anything less than pander my job would be in jeopardy. The quality of service that I provided was a direct reflection of who I was and how I was brought up and I couldn’t see myself breaking those vows that I made intravenously. To explain a little further of how much I hated my job here is a direct quote that I said at the closing of one of my holiday shifts at the EB, “I hate my F#$king job, G@#da#$it...” But with that I still provided that best service that I could muster at that time for my customers.
The thing that bewilders me the most is the state that our country is now, financially. There are people that can’t even find a job at McDonald’s and here we have “customer service reps” taking a large ill spirited dump on the retail industry. Where is the accountability? These jerks need to know that their job is at risk for anything less than favorable customer service and every minute of every day that this is not happening is a push out the door of employment to the unemployment line. If you don’t like to smile or greet people go work in a factory or something or maybe in a morgue, I promise you won’t get any complaints there. Oh yeah to you companies that want to save from your bottom line by outsourcing quit it. If I have to call Dehli to speak to 15 idiots that I can’t understand and they can’t understand me, I’m going to flip. Also, I know your game your name is not really “Greg”, so stop it.
Sorry about that I had to vent a little.
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