How often do we come across reviews from customers of all kinds of aspects and issues: shops, service they have received, goods, etc.?
Well, this is going to be an employee's review of customers. Shortly after moving to Israel I started working as a shop assistant in an art and jewelry gallery. During my work there, which was by the way quite significant amount of time, I came across so many kinds of customers I could almost scream "I've seen them all'! Friendly, not friendly, talkative, speechless, demanding, rude, impatient, "The customer is always right!" kind to name but a few. The first kind was very breed. Unfortunately the percentage of normal customers was very low and continued to decline throughout my job.
I'll never forget the case, when one very strange customer went furious at my delicate request not to touch crystal candlesticks. She began touching and turning them on purpose, dropped them of course, and then instead of an apology and an offer to cover the damage, she burst into threats and cries and waltzed out of the shop...Astonishing…
Today customers have become very demanding! And the situation is getting worse. They feel that "good customer service" is only "good" when they get exactly what it is that they demand even when the demand is completely unreasonable. Behaving like spoiled 5-year-old children with no boundaries and no basic concept of respect, their actions sometimes become absurd. Now I'm not talking only about Israeli customers, lots of other customers from all over the world have started to act very impolitely. To customers who don't know basic means of normal communication I suggest that they remain in front of their laptops and buy things only online!
What's your opinion?
You had very bad working conditions!!But I think that not only customers have bad behaviour.Yesterday in his Christmas speech the Pope said that people have become greedy and voracious!!
ReplyDeleteI've been a store manager in "CASTRO" for 8 years. So, I'm aware of the challenges in customer service. I can totally agree with you, there are many kinds of customers and sometimes they are difficult. I belive that the sentence: "The customer is always right" is not correct in every case. Sometimes, I understand that the customer is wrong. Then, handle the situation. It's not always easy.
ReplyDeleteIt is a long-time debate in the customer service world. At the beginning the attitude was that the customers will have to buy whatever was offered to them, or in Henry Ford's words : "costumers can buy any car they want, in any color and any shape as log it's a black model-T Ford", then the winds had changed and the phrase "The customer is always right" was coined, but now days it is clear that this has gone to far and that the customer is not always right but it is up to the serviceperson to manage the situation in a way that will result in the customer understanding that he can't get exactly what he or she was asking for and still be happy with the service he or she was getting - and that is tremendously difficult
ReplyDeleteYunona, i highly appre4ciate your payience and the ability to maintain your cool even in such circumstances as you described, given the reality that not all the customers know how to behave. For me personally this would be a huge challenge cause I tend to be emotionally dragged into a situation.
ReplyDeleteWell, I guess it's a kind of resilience you start developing if you work in customer service long enough... Well done!