For Your Convenience
Are senior managers still failing to really get close to their customers after at least two decades of being begged to do so?
I popped into one of those convenience stores operated by a major realer yesterday evening for a bottle of wine and a few groceries. As I approached the tills to pay my heart sank. ‘For my convenience’, they had installed self service tills in which you scan in your own goods and manage your own payment. Putting aside my prejudice that this can only be ‘for my convenience’, if there is a long queue at the tills managed by smiling and very efficient shop assistants and no queue at the self service option, I accepted the invitation from one of the staff to ‘do it myself’.
Scanning in the bottle of wine, the screen flashed ‘seek assistance” I waited with growing impatience for a member of staff to finish serving another customer. She walked over to help. Now unlike a large supermarket, staff in this store are positioned behind a counter access to the back of which is through two security doors. The only way the sales assistant, a person of some girth, could see the screen, which faced outwards, was to climb onto the counter and peer over the top.
“It’s asking me to check your ID to see if you are old enough”, she said, adding unflatteringly, “But I can see I don’t need to”.
She wiped a card over the scanner, the payment was accepted and she went back to serve another customer. I produced another bottle of wine from my basket, in the sure and certain knowledge of what would happen next.
“Seek assistance!”
Another shop assistant climbed on the counter, swaying dangerously back forward to repeat the operation.
“You’d better stay there”, I said, “I’ve got another bottle”
Same customer, same purchase occasion? I was glad I hadn’t been buying for a party.
I gathered up my purchases and fled, wondering how many times this story would repeat itself in the course of a single evening?
A trivial case but there are some leadership issues here, and the biggest one is “how?”. How did a mighty retailer end up with such a naff arrangement? What is the leadership story behind this? Who failed to understand the customer experience? I can’t believe that someone in the front line didn’t see immediately the problem. Who didn’t listen?
A thought piece by Stephen Carter September 2009
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