One of the things that I really enjoy doing is to help people develop their Customer Service and Relationship Management Skills.

I tend to notice when the customer experience is not quite as good as it could be when I am a customer.

In this week’s blog, I would like to share a story about what I witnessed last weekend and how a lack of planning and thought by a major retailer for their customers and employees is costing them revenue and not making a great contribution to customer and staff satisfaction.

Last Saturday morning I was standing in a queue of about 15 people to purchase a lottery ticket. There is a special kiosk for lottery tickets, confectionary and cigarettes. People with only a few items in their basket also use it. There are 3 till outlets but on most Saturday’s there is quite often only one till open.

The person behind the counter has quite a full on shift. They pleasantly deal with customer after customer. It is relentless. Many of the customers quite often remark that it would be helpful to have two tills open on a Saturday.

This weekend, I witnessed a pointless conversation. A supervisor noticed the size of the queue and proceeded to conduct a conversation with the cashier from about 10 yards away whilst he was pushing a stack of trolleys back to the front of the shop as he noticed the length of the queue. The interaction went like this.

Supervisor to cashier ”How are you doing?”

Cashier to supervisor “Pretty swamped actually.”

Supervisor to cashier “Well there is nothing I can do about it, as I have nobody to put on the other till.” He then promptly walked off.

Customers just looked at each other in amazement, they felt and expressed sympathy for the very pleasant young lad behind the counter who was doing his best to serve people as quickly as he could. He was doing so with a smile and an apology to people for the length of time they had to wait to be served.

However well intended, the intervention by the supervisor served no meaningful purpose and did not add anything. In all honesty saying nothing would have been preferable.

Customer satisfaction did not increase; the cashier would not have felt appreciated or heard by his supervisor and his employers. The company are losing income as I saw potential customers look at the size of the queue and decide not to bother joining it. They must have made a choice to not buy anything or buy it elsewhere.

It really is a lose, lose situation. Nobody feels great and it could be very different by the application of a bit of common sense.

It occurred to me that if the company employed someone extra to work part-time on a Saturday to work specifically on the other till for eight hours it would improve matters dramatically. Assuming it cost them an extra £80 a week, I am sure they would recoup that and more in increased sales. Now that would be good for the economy. They would also have greater staff and customer satisfaction.

It occurred to me that if I can observe this in a few moments then a switched on store manager ought to be able to identify and compose a common sense and practical solution too.

I will make a polite suggestion on one of their customer feedback forms the next time I am in the store. I would have done so last Saturday but my parking ticket was about to expire and I did not want to incur a fine.

Imagine how happy I and others would have been if queuing for a lottery ticket had yielded nothing apart from a parking fine! Now that would have been ironic!

This week have a think about what you can do to influence the improvement of the service you receive in return for your hard earned cash. If you run a business or a team think about what you and your team can do to improve your customer service. What is the one thing that you can do that will have a positive influence on service levels?

Quote for the week:

“If you’re not serving the customer, your job is to be serving someone who is.” Jan Carlzon, Former CEO of Scandinavian Airlines.

To arrange a free no obligation consultation, please contact Stephen Pauley via the contact form or by e mail: Stephen@befirstclass.co.uk