Customer Service – Alive and kicking?
Where do you get the worst customer service?
For another little job I was doing (I like to get around), I went undercover in central London to get some examples of shop service at its best, or should I say worst.
Rigged up with a camera and microphone under my clothes – the camera was actually one of the buttons on my shirt – I ventured out onto the high street and the results were, frankly, hilarious.
In a sports shop, I fiddled with trainers and looked around anxiously for staff to help me. There were several present, but none seemed interested in serving me. After around 20 minutes I had to play keepy-uppy with one of the nearby footballs to get attention and this only happened because my lack of skill almost led to a shelf collapsing when the ball span off the outside of my foot.
In a bank I gazed longingly at leaflets promising me a mortgage, but it was as if I was invisible. This pattern continued everywhere. In a department store no-one wanted to help me with a suit and in a well-known adult entertainment shop I took a strange looking piece of soap out of a box and tried on a feather boa. Still the assistants, dressed in rather fetching rubber nurses’ uniforms, were more interested in chatting than helping an embarrassed looking shopper.
Can you guess what happened when I went into a branch of a well-known travel agency chain? Actually, it wasn’t as bad as some of the examples above. But it wasn’t exactly great either. I was left looking at brochures for several minutes before a woman approached me. After a brief chat, she seemed very happy for me leave with brochures and didn’t attempt to take any of my details or, heaven forbid, encourage me to buy a holiday.
Of course, I was only pretending that I wanted some goods and services. But they didn’t know that (I am a consummate actor, darling) and, on the face of it, I had a lot of money to spend.
Is it any wonder that more and more of us are buying goods and services over the Internet where the service and response to your needs is actually far better than you get in many high street outlets?
Do you have any examples of bad service?
Guest Article by Jeremy Skidmore
Monday, May 30th, 2005
My name is Alan Potts and I'm the Editor of the UK Ferry Tickets web site and Managing Director of BUYability Limited. You can connect with me or keep up to date with new posts on this blog via the following social media sites: 
