Ian's exasperating shopping experience...

Last night I had to visit a well known retail emporium in Duplication Road. Not a pleasant experience to consider as visiting this particular store always makes me think of the Tokyo subway where they employ professional pushers to get as many people as possible into the smallest space available.

Anyway, it’s an experience I want to share with you.

I wanted just one product but a substantial number of them.

So, I went to the relevant department and started counting the items.

Suddenly, a salesperson (a rare bird in this store) came over and said “Excuse me Sir, how many of these do you want?” I told him how many and then with a smile and sweetness he uttered the following “Sir, why don’t I get them from the stock room to save you time because they will have to take the tags off each item at the cash desk and that will take time”

I was floored. I wasn’t used to use highbrow intellect in this store and actually wondered if he was a university graduate.

“I’ll send them to the cash point in about 5 minutes”

I was breathing heavily now. Unparalled service, a smile, answering my needs and he told me what he would do to help and how long it would take. I had him down as a front runner in the Shop Assistant of the Year Awards.

I wandered around and then joined one of the shorter queues of about 10 people.

True to form, my items arrived about 3 minutes later.

This was great. Everything ready. Correct money in hand. Goods ready. Brilliant.

Then it came my turn and I felt like Napoleon during the Russian campaign. Everything looked right, but I had overlooked one crucial fact.

None of the assistants can count.

I had 60 items. All the same. Simple to count? 1 to 60. A child of 10 could do it and there were hordes of them running riot so one could have been grabbed by the scruff of the neck and asked to demonstrate his mathematical ability.

The till assistant thought he could do better. (He obviously hadn’t seen the US game show “So, you think you’re cleverer than a 10 year old?”)

He got to 58, lost count and had to start again. Count 1

This time he got to 59, lost it (count 2) and started counting again, gave up and called someone with a larger brain over as he retired beaten and humiliated. Count 3. His friend, a supervisor no less, made the full 60, but there was this niggling doubt that he might have made a mistake so, just to be sure, he started again.

Count 4

All the while the queue was building and customers with armfulls of clothes were starting to get that “I’m going to kill you in a minute because I have to get home to make the dinner” look, kids were crying and people who hadn’t even arrived at other cashpoints when I did were leaving the store.

When the supervisor had completed his count he then handed the items back to the cashier who proceeded to do the unthinkable.

He counted them AGAIN.

Count 5.

People in the queue behind me were now desperate. One man slit his wrists and 2 women died of starvation whilst another gave birth. (She hadn’t been pregnant when she came into the store).

OK, so I have made this episode more humorous than I originally intended but all the facts are true. Unfortunately for me – and the store.

There’s no way I will ever visit this store again. I’ll tell everyone I can about the quality of service they are likely to experience in an attempt to save them from a fate worse than death. Every lost customer is lost profit. Every bad customer experience is a lost customer. Every poorly trained customer service assistant or cashier is a bad customer experience.

Training customer facing staff is as important as spending the marketing budget in the right way.

Training is NOT a cost, it’s an investment in profitability and every rupee of your marketing budget will be totally wasted if the staff employed to deal with customers don’t know what they are doing.

Or can’t even count to 60.

How do they tell the time then?