SPA Way chief executive Sara Pearson thinks customer service should not be forgotten in these economically challenging times
Why does everybody have to be so horrid? Have you noticed just how unpleasant so many people are at present? I know we are living through exceptional times and there are very few people who are either enjoying it or able to exploit these tricky trading circumstances but surely that makes us all equal.
Yet the level of grumpiness is unprecedented.
Where is the Dunkirk spirit – why is it that we can pull together in war (so we are told) yet are unable to muster the same spirit of ‘we’re all in it together’ during this fiscal battle?
Customers deal with it in several different ways: previously reasonable human beings transmogrify into the devils servant, hibernate like groundhogs in hard winters and only communicate through third parties or act like Martians – the mouths move but what comes out makes no sense.
In the shops there is a noticeable change. On the one hand, the word had gone out from on high – service, service, service. Having just returned from India – the high altar of service and being sold to – I like being attended to.
It always reminds me of that scene in Pretty Woman when Richard Gere takes Julia Roberts shopping and tells the shop assistant he wants her to be looked after and the assistant keeps enquiring whether what he is doing is enough or is more called for.
That being said, there have been enough incidences in the last week of irrational behaviour by store staff to believe we are seeing a trend. For example, I am pushing one of those mini trolleys around a high street store and there are about a dozen items in it.
I arrive at a vacant mini checkout station and start to decant my stuff onto the counter.
The checkout assistant fixes me with a look and says “this is only for baskets; I’ll let you off this time”.
I glance around; there is no sign to that effect. I ask “how am I supposed to know”. He repeats: “This is only for baskets”. I persist “but I’m not psychic”. I can see he is about to repeat his mantra again, I switch off and think about supper, painting my nails, the leak in the bathroom – anything to blot him out.
Then again there was the incident of the noisette of lamb (rolled loin) I fancied one for supper. I went to the butcher counter in my local supermarket. Normally, they are a font of knowledge and service personified.
I enquire brightly: “Have you got any noisette of lamb”. I am met with a vacant stare, I am asked to repeat my request, and he says “we don’t do that”. “Well you do because I’ve bought it many times,” he persists “we don’t do that”. I feel inspired. “Do you know what I am talking about?” “No,” he says and turns his back on me.
I wander off and decide to regroup my thoughts on my dinner plans as I walk round the store doing the rest of my shopping. Ten minutes later I am passing the butchers counter and see there has been a shift change.
I ask the new man on duty with the cleaver. Bingo, he knows what I am talking about and although he has hasn’t got any ready prepared noisette of lamb he will quickly rustle one up and I tell him I want one long piece NOT cut up. Off I go again, happy that my dinner is back on course.
I return for the third time. I see a series of noisette slices lined up on the scale. I say: “I particularly said I didn’t want it cut up”. “You’ll have to have them,” he says. “Well, no I won’t,” I say. He retorts “but I can’t sell them”. “Yes you can,” I say and walk off.
Guys, we are all in this together, lets at least try and pull together and not forget this ghastly time will pass.
