simplerich

I’m in a store and I’m shopping and an employee asks if I need help finding anything. This is normal at every store. It’s part of the training to tell employees to notice customers and greet them that way. Where it gets different is when the training actually has a Day 2 and the employee knows to try and help the customer.

I’m in retail. I’ve been in retail for years. I notice customer service as often as I notice if vents are clean or not. It’s a curse. Rosa over at Talking Story recently brought up a retail incident involving the check-out procedure at a grocery store. I encourage you to go give it a read. It brought up the questions sales associates ask that they don’t really need or want the answer to. Questions they’re trained to ask, but then the training stops… or the trainer assumes the employee will take it from there.

I recently shopped at a Hy-Vee and the employee asked if I wanted help finding something. When I said a papaya she offered to order me some and was more concerned about having them for me on time than about what she would do with the rest of the ones she’d have to order to meet her minimum order. Later, at the same store an employee offered to order me crab fingers and assured me that the rest of the minimum order would be sold to someone, and again was more concerned that I got them on time. Hy-Vee is an employee-owned grocery store in Iowa. As you can see from the customer service they provide it’s a popular one. I’ve never had a bad experience at my Hy-Vee. The employees there are trained not just to ask questions, but to listen to the answer and help the customer get what they want.

Another store that often, but not always does a good job at this is Home Depot where when I ask where something is, often the employee will take me to the item. There are those where you can tell the manager isn’t as customer focused as others because they’ll just point or say “Aisle 23 on the right.” The ones that take me to what I want… those are the ones I go back to.

When at the cash register how often have we been asked “Did you find everything all right today?” What are they going to do if we were to say “Nope. I couldn’t find the peanut butter and jelly flavored freeze-dried astronaut food ice cream packs.” My guess is they’re going to say “Awww. I’m sorry,” and BEEP BEEP BEEP their way through the rest of the stuff on the conveyor belt. They’ve just asked me a question they had no intention of listening to the answer to.

A more frequent example is when people say “How are you?” as part of a greeting but then they don’t stop for us to answer. If there’s no intent to listen to the answer, don’t ask the question. The part of the post where I come to a radical conclusion or offer an insight or training technique to help make the world a better place is going to be woefully missing here. The thing is, the answer is easy. I’ve said it a couple times in the post and title. Employees should be trained not to just offer help, but actually follow through on the help. When an employee asks a leading question but doesn’t follow up on the answer they’re failing the customer and the store.

The Don’t ask me a question if you’re not listening to the answer… by Rich Griffith, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.