Customer Service???
I hate Wal-Mart. It is not actually Wal-Mart I hate it is the business culture that the store has created. I overheard a conversation between two women today, on of which works at Le Chateu and frankly her attitude sucks, she is yet another person I am adding to my list of people I would not hire to clean my toilet.
According to this woman retail is a great environment to work in because you can just stand there and do nothing, now if a customer approaches you have to talk to them, but really you do not do anything. Whatever happened to customer service, whatever happened to pride in your job? Whatever happened to work ethic?
I am part of a start-up and know that I have hours of hard work, endless selling and strategising to do. It really concerns me that after all the effort I will put into selling my products to retail stores some store manager is ultimately going to be trusting some person like the woman mentioned above to sell the me products to consumers. I hate Wal-Mart, I blame Wal-Mart for this attitude.
About two years ago I needed to buy an SD card. This was the first one I had ever bought and a friend told me to just go to Wal-Mart because they had them on sale cheap and really anyone in Audio/Video should be able to help me. NOT!!! The particular day I visited my local Wal-Mart store I was dealing with not one, but two women over fifty who were totally computer illiterate. I finally left the store and after telling them that I there was no way I was buying anything from them and I would gladly pay whatever premium a computer store would charge me just so I could talk to a knowledgeable salesperson. Wal-Mart has lowered the bar of staff knowledge and consequently customer service so low that being a sales clerk is an entry level position, not just entry, but first job ever.
We are trusting people who have never worked a day in their life to be the frontline workers in our economy. They are are being trusted with customers who have questions, they are being trusted as the faces of our businesses. They are not being trained in the simplest of customer service skills and consequently people are receiving terrible service.
This would not be so bad if it was confined to Wal-Mart, but it is not, as I stated in the beginning the young lady works at LeChateu, a mid-market retail clothing chain. She is cute as cute can be, but lacks anything that remotely resembles a frontline personality, to quote Billy Joel, "All you need are looks and a whole lotta money". And you do not even need the money anymore, you can get it on credit.
According to this woman retail is a great environment to work in because you can just stand there and do nothing, now if a customer approaches you have to talk to them, but really you do not do anything. Whatever happened to customer service, whatever happened to pride in your job? Whatever happened to work ethic?
I am part of a start-up and know that I have hours of hard work, endless selling and strategising to do. It really concerns me that after all the effort I will put into selling my products to retail stores some store manager is ultimately going to be trusting some person like the woman mentioned above to sell the me products to consumers. I hate Wal-Mart, I blame Wal-Mart for this attitude.
About two years ago I needed to buy an SD card. This was the first one I had ever bought and a friend told me to just go to Wal-Mart because they had them on sale cheap and really anyone in Audio/Video should be able to help me. NOT!!! The particular day I visited my local Wal-Mart store I was dealing with not one, but two women over fifty who were totally computer illiterate. I finally left the store and after telling them that I there was no way I was buying anything from them and I would gladly pay whatever premium a computer store would charge me just so I could talk to a knowledgeable salesperson. Wal-Mart has lowered the bar of staff knowledge and consequently customer service so low that being a sales clerk is an entry level position, not just entry, but first job ever.
We are trusting people who have never worked a day in their life to be the frontline workers in our economy. They are are being trusted with customers who have questions, they are being trusted as the faces of our businesses. They are not being trained in the simplest of customer service skills and consequently people are receiving terrible service.
This would not be so bad if it was confined to Wal-Mart, but it is not, as I stated in the beginning the young lady works at LeChateu, a mid-market retail clothing chain. She is cute as cute can be, but lacks anything that remotely resembles a frontline personality, to quote Billy Joel, "All you need are looks and a whole lotta money". And you do not even need the money anymore, you can get it on credit.
posted by Jeffrey at 4:34 PM
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