Shops are wrong to give up on customer service

Increasingly, I despair at service industry standards. The paucity of common sense, the lack of initiative, the crushing absence not just of charm, but efficiency.

My local Post Office franchise has been taken over by UOE, a stationery supplier. Lovely new store, far fewer serving points. Great air-con, but sighing, shuffling, grumbling 40-minute queues almost out the door while staff in logo T-shirts wander about straightening displays while studiously avoiding eye contact.

“Excuse me, can I speak to a manager?” I asked this week. “He’s not here,” the female staff member replied mournfully.

“Can you see there’s a big problem?” I countered.

“Yes, I know, it’s awful,” she said, the floodgates opening. “I hate this. Everyone is getting cross with us because we’re understaffed, and not all the staff can work the system.”

“The big problem isn’t the lack of manpower, it’s the absence of communication. Just tell us you’re understaffed and explain why your employees are titivating Jiffy bag shelves, rather than serving customers. Tell us you are doing your best.”

“I can’t do that,” she said. “Can you email head office?”

Then came a big grocery shop at Sainsbury’s. A bottle of Fitou plunged off the conveyor belt and smashed on the floor, right at the feet of a pensioner wearing flip-flops.

She was splashed and looked understandably upset and speechless. I immediately apologised and went to offer assistance. A manager hurried over… and just stood there.

His contribution while the elderly lady’s daughter gingerly checked her mother’s leg and

footwear for shards of glass? He called for a cleaner and then just stood there. Finally, he spoke. What did he say to this shaken woman who hadn’t so much been offered a chair, much less a glass of water? “You’ll need to change lanes.”

I had to intervene. “I think under the circumstances a member of staff should transfer her groceries.” He thought about this and then nodded.

Meanwhile, another customer trailed through the broken glass. There was no sign of a cleaner and the checkout operator sighed and asked if I really did want a replacement bottle? It was evidently too big an ask, so I declined.

A first-world problem for sure. But an unnecessary one. While I don’t for a moment expect supermarket cashiers to treat me like royalty for spending £300, I’d like to think a manager – any manager, – would demonstrate a bit more nous and a lot more oomph.

The mantra that the customer is always right has fallen out of favour. But even just updating it to “the customer always has rights” would be a step in the right direction.