People don't always understand the importance of being kind in everyday life. In businesses in particular, kindness or politeness plays a crucial part. It's not just about greeting people or smiling at them, although it does start from these. It's also about the overall attitude adopted while meeting the customers or clients. Most importantly it's about how you welcome people to participate in your business.
In Mauritius, some organisations all too often neglect to give enough importance to how customers are being attended to, thus keeping an important part of their stakeholders unhappy. Shops and supermarkets are concrete examples of this. Quality service rarely prevails in those organisations, at best the service is acceptable.
Do you ever come out of a supermarket feeling satisfied or saying "Wow! That was one hell of a service!"?
You see, the low quality of service is so generally dispersed that customers could stop expecting something better. I mean, if you have no means to compare the service, you won't even notice if one particular supermarket's service is better or worse. The service would just fall in the mean, it would just be acceptable service, as usual. And that should be avoided.
Supermarkets should compete in terms of quality of service and other factors other than price. If we, as customers, start being choosy about quality of service then probably changes would start taking place. That might take some time but the most important part of it is to get out of that "zombie customers" state and to stop letting organisations choose the way they want to treat their customers.
Totally right!!! ..and let's go for a Total Quality Management and Service!!!!!
ReplyDeleteHmmm, any clue about the supermarket u r talking abt? :P
ReplyDeleteI normally understand some of the staff, I have worked in a supermarket, I can imagine how unhappy some of them might be with their job, but surely they can atleast say hi! That's the least I expect. I don't mind if they don't say thank you,...etc, but atleast say hi FFS! Also, the arrogance that some of them display is incredible. It seems like the customer has to be very nice and understanding, but the member of staff doesn't have to be. If you say anything to the person, you are the villain straight away.
ReplyDeletethats true esp in service industry when you work directly with customers and this is something very rare in mtius to find customer care people who are 'accueillante or aimable ou meme souriante'
ReplyDeleteI've been working in a supermarket after I finished my A'Levels. I enjoyed it. I was always smiling to the customers. LOL I was so innocent then! *sighs*
ReplyDeleteBut I agree with you. Excellent customer service is a must. As it is, I pull my hair many a time over here. Why is it so hard for people to be nice? *shrugs*
I agree. You rarely get treated nicely in Mauritian shops. Most of the time you get annoying and arrogant sales person.
ReplyDeleteThere's a funny trick I do. You know when you pass through the checkout at a supermarket, sometimes the cashier does not tell you how much it costs. Well, I just stand there frozen and wait for her to tell me that. I hope she realizes that customers cant see her screen. ;)