One thing I can't stand more than anything and I mean anything, I have just spent 5 minutes trying to think of things that I dislike more and all I could think of was spiders and cockroaches, is poor customer service.
My general distaste for the men and women who engage in this behaviour is well founded and deep seated. I genuinely detest people who treat a paying, or even non-paying customer for that matter with a sour look, a short temper and a bad attitude. After all, without us, there would be no retail jobs.
I was about to enter into a tirade about an "incident" that I had with a staff member at a Spotlight store a few weeks back but quite simply, the tirade is boring and my efforts to address the issue with the staff member through calm, collected and polite means followed by a complaint to their head office via their web page and the consequent lack luster apology from some random who rang me at home on a Friday evening at 6pm, just fell on deaf ears and for a while there made me feel as if what is the point in complaining in the first place? What is the point of the company having a complaint page on their website if the follow up is just as poor as the shit head who served me at the beginning of all this drama? It seems this wasn't an isolated incident and a friend who I told my story about Spotlight too had also had an encouter of the rude and unhelpful kind at the same store just a few weeks prior.
It made me think a little deeper about what the hell is going on in the world? Why had so many people working in customer service become so angry with their customers, so angry with the world and so thoughtless about their approach with people?
Watching an episode of Insight from a few weeks back where the topic centered around Internet trolls, I had an enlightening moment of clarity and perhaps an answer to my above question. If you've read any of my past posts, you will know that I don't think too highly of those that engage in antisocial behaviour online, however one troll they interviewed was more than your average 'under-a-bridge-dwelling' troll and made some really poignant statements one of which resonated with me- "the core of it is that people are so dissatisfied and I think they're dissatisfied because our generation is the first in a long time that knows they're looking downward. That our civilisations are in decline and if you want people to be less discontented you're going to have to improve the management of the society. You know, spread wealth a little bit more and generally make people have a sense of a positive outlook on the future. That as long as they think that the future is negative they're going to be at war with the external society."
Perhaps that is what was wrong with all these jaded customer service people, in fact, perhaps this was part of the root cause of a lot of problems we have in society. Perhaps these people were overworked, perhaps these people had watched one too many of their fellow colleagues being made redundant and were worried the same was going to happen to them, after all it seems that redundancy is the new black. Perhaps they were but a bunch of skeleton staff working to keep big businesses afloat on a remuneration package that left little in the hip pocket at the end of every week and it's no secret that retail pays pittance. I can say with utmost certainty, that the woman that served me a few weeks back at Spotlight and the unit that served me yesterday at Woolies as an example, looked as miserable as hell. It was a sad state of affairs. They put me in shit moods and I truly wondered why they participated in such jobs if they were just so terribly miserable that the only way they could function in their positions was to make everyone else around them feel just as miserable too.
Blah! Life is just way too short to have people around me with their negativity and their poor outlook on life but I can't escape it, it's everywhere, I'm a consumer I need to purchase to survive and everyone I know seems to be having repeat bad experiences with customer service folk just like me and I'm not just talking about a one off episode in their life many many moons ago, I'm talking about recent, prolonged and continual dissatisfaction.
For me, the reason that it bothers me so much is that a smile is free and as wanky as that sounds, it won't kill you to smile at someone even if you feel negative within yourself. You'd be amazed at what it does for you and the recipient when you engage in the activity. Trust me, it won't crack your face and it won't kill you, try it! But on a serious note, in my line of work, I have met many people whose future doesn't look good, their outlook on life is one that is drastically cut short, many of them given but weeks to live lives fraught with pain and suffering but I can't remember a time that any of them treated me as rudely as some customer service staff have. Yes, the situation and the setting is entirely different and yes, some of them have found it difficult to smile and to engage with me, but they have very real and valid reasons not to. Those that ignore you when you walk into a shop looking for help, snatch your credit card off you, can't even bring themselves to say hi or how can I help you, bark orders at you down the line of the phone when all you rang for was assistance...I just see no need and it frustrates me immensely.
For a while I felt like it was just me and that I was the target in some weird Truman Show-Esq poor customer service racket but fear not, there are entire TV programs, news articles, current affairs topics and media investigations dedicated to bringing poor customer service under the spotlight. Mary Portas is most well known for pioneering to improve customer service particularly in the fast fashion retails sector, think Supre as an example. She sheds light on the fact that many big businesses continue to report record profits but don't recycle profits by way of improving the quality and quantity of customer service by investing in their staff. Again, another reason why some customer service staff show little if any enthusiasm for their profession.
All in all, there is a fair argument for both sides and it is big greedy businesses which are shaping society. Just like the troll said, there needs to be a better spread of wealth and not just that spread of wealth in the form of hand fulls of cash being thrown from the office window of the CEO of the Commonwealth Bank, a bank which boasted a statutory net profit after tax for the full year ended 30 June 2012 of $7,090 million, an increase of 11 per cent on the prior year, although I certainly wouldn't argue with them should they wish to engage in such an activity, but change can occur when we start at the grass root level, in fact, half the time that is the only way to change.
Take the local dump. Ours charges a minimum of $40 to dump rubbish even if you were to dump just a bucket full. As a result of the sky rocketing prices to remove and dump waste the bush land in our local area is infested with mounds of gyprock, brick, broken furniture and all manner of rubbish because people are either 1. protesting against the price of rubbish removal and dumping or 2. can not afford to dump legally. So along comes a little guy from the council who puts up this little pink ribbon around the mound of crap on which is something printed to the effects of "illegal dumping" etc etc and it gets left there, like a mark of the fact that someone is watching, watching enough to just put a ribbon on it? Perhaps it is the ever increasingly unattainable zen in one's life that is upsetting people, the exorbitant cost of living and maybe it is being treated rudely and unfairly for no good reason.
For now, I reside to the fact that I will have to endure poor customer service from time to time for years to come. I don't see it changing any time soon, I don't see Wesfarmers or Woolworths, Woolworths being the largest retail company in Australia and NZ and the owners of Woolworths, Woolworths online, Safeway, Food for Less, Flemmings, Thomas Dux Grocer, Macro Wholefoods, Safeway Liquor, BWS, Dan Murphy's Woolthworths Liquor, Cellarmasters and Wineark - Wine storage and Retailer/Langtons Wine Auctions/Dorrien Estate Winery/Vinpac - Bottling plant/Winemarket - Online retailer/International Liquor Wholesalers - Imports/WineIQ - Telemarketing/Cellar Force - Telemarketing, ALH – Hotel and Poker Machine operator, which is 75% owned by Woolworths Limited. This makes Woolworths one of the largest players in the Poker machine industry, Caltex Woolworths/Safeway, BIG W, Dick Smith, Tandy and Masters Home Improvement, well, I don't see them doing anything to improve their service over night and quite frankly, they don't have to, they hold the biggest monopoly over food, grocery and alcohol supply in the country, they don't need us as much as we need them. Greedy much?
What I will do however is get on my soap box if and when poor customer service comes knocking. I will name and shame the individual and the company, I will complain should the problem be big enough to warrant it, I won't shop and give these businesses money they don't deserve, if and when I can avoid it and I will make a stand for the little people making the giants rich and being treated poorly for it in the process even if by staff jaded by the giants too. That, I won't stand for!
