I just got back from Borders and I now find that I am torn. Throughout my 30 odd years of collecting a paycheck in many different aspects of customer service duringmy professional life, I find myself constantly evaluating other people on what they are doing well and not. Since we moved to the east coast for the majority most customer service here really blows and I am pretty sure Collie would back me up on that with a “thats for sure”. For the most part they are there to collect thier paycheck and mostly I am lucky to get a thank you. People for the most care really don’t care about other people (I guess thats another whole subject for me to talk about) and they show it in their “professional” activities. I do a bit a travel and I definetly find bad service all over but in other places its an exception not the norm. HOWEVER once in while I find a person who trys hard. (Thank you CVS Pharmacy lady!) And for those people that I find who go the extra step, I find someone at the other end, someone who just trys to hard. The lady just kept trying to chat me up by talking about the books I bought and when she was a kid and I just didn’t want to hear it. So she just kept on chatting during the whole payment and I just wanted her to shut up…so the question is, can you try to hard to be nice or am I just a dick wanting her to finish so I can leave?
Woof!
View From The Doghouse 
September 6, 2010 at 9:50 pm
The key for those responsible for providing customer service is to know which your customer wants by reading the cues. Unfortunately, this is beyond some people and something other folks have never been trained in.
I grew up in the restaurant business and it was important to learn that some customers were looking to talk and other were looking to be left alone during their meal. Being too present can be as bad as not present enough.
Cheers, Bill.