Reader's Digest talked to shoppers, salespeople and experts across the country to find out...
What Ever Happened to Customer Service?

BY ROBERT KIENER

YOU NEED a new automatic coffeemaker. Several are on display -- different prices, different features -- but you can't find a clerk. Finally one slinks by, trying to avoid eye contact. You collar him, but he knows even less about coffeemakers than you do.

       You stand at the watch counter, waiting to look at an expensive wristwatch. Two young clerks are chatting animatedly to each other at the cash register. You clear your throat, but they keep talking. At last one of them turns to help you. Her forced smile says you're intruding.

       You call a department store's customer-service line. A recording tells you, "Your call is important to us..." Then comes the elevator music. Five minutes later you're still waiting.

RETAILING is big business in Canada. Every day millions of transactions take place in over 120,000 stores across the country, generating a staggering $260-billion-a-year flow of purchases. But why do those bad encounters with salespeople continue to bother us so?

       When the Retail Council of Canada and American Express asked 830 Canadians in 1997 what they considered the most important aspect of customer service, they ranked staff courtesy, helpfulness and knowledgeability at the top. The survey also showed that while a third of consumers have a store in mind when shopping for a specific item, nine times out of ten the customer leaves that store empty-handed. Over half of these customers say they did not buy the item because of the store's poor service or selection.

       In 1997 the Ontario-based National Quality Institute asked Canadians to rank the overall service quality of 20 different industries. Large retail stores failed miserably. Indeed, respondents placed them near the bottom; only government, cable-TV companies and the postal service fared worse. Nearly a third also said the quality of service in large retail stores was declining.

       To look behind the figures, Reader's Digest travelled to malls, discount chains, home-renovation centres and neighbourhood stores across Canada. We spoke with customers and sales personnel. Then we asked industry experts to explain the poor service that plagues us.

       The Invisible Shopper. Liz Lancaster of Hamilton wanted to buy a variety of casual summer clothes. She set out for the massive Lime Ridge Mall, where she visited Sears, Eaton's, The Bay and a handful of other stores. In not one did a salesperson acknowledge her, let alone offer to help. "Shopping used to be a pleasure but now it's a pain," Lancaster says. "It's as if the clerks couldn't care less."

       "The root of the problem is a lack of respect for the customer," says Tracey Conners, a manager at The Corporate Research Group in Nepean, Ont. Conners, whose employees conduct undercover shopping assignments for retailers nationwide, reports that more and more stores are realizing they have to improve their treatment of customers.

       Even though shoppers are now weaned on the self-service culture, most told us that while uncomfortable with "pushy" salespeople, they still expect a courteous recognition.

       "There is no excuse for salespeople to ignore shoppers," says John Williams, senior partner of the J. C. Williams Group, Toronto-based retail consultants. "Shoppers tell us they want to be acknowledged even if it's just a wave or a smile."

       Hello...Is Anybody Here? Gary Mercer, shopping at a home-supply store in Saint John, N.B., says, "It takes forever to get waited on." Adds Mercer, a quality-assurance office administrator for a management-construction company: "Stores are losing customers -- and sales -- because people are fed up having to search for a clerk."

       Even salespeople notice. Terry Oselies of Edmonton, a 15-year veteran with Sears, realized just how much things had changed when she helped a customer find the right bra size one day.

       The woman turned to Oselies after her one-hour fitting and said: "I can't believe you spent so much time helping me. It's been ages since I've had such attention in a store."

       What's happened? Michael Hepworth, president of Hepworth and Company, a customer-retention consultancy, told us: "Many retailers made the mistake of cutting staff to the bone to save costs. Sales have suffered as frustrated customers have defected."

       How good is the help once you find it? Tracey Conners says, "Time and again our undercover shoppers report that they encounter unknowledgeable and untrained salespeople." Diane J. Brisebois, president and chief executive officer of the Retail Council of Canada, says, "We're not training as much as we should," but she notes the council is implementing customer-service programs aimed at salespeople.

       Needed: Attitude Adjustment. Like many men his age, 37-year-old Jody Engel of Edmonton is not an avid shopper. But, needing a new shirt, he went to Eaton's at the West Edmonton Mall. In the men's department, he couldn't find the dress shirt he was looking for -- or a clerk to help him.

       He finally located a clerk and asked where he could find the shirt. "It's there. Right in front of you!" the clerk said as she pointed to a display rack and coldly turned away.

       "I was speechless," recalls Engel. He left the store empty-handed and vowed never to return. (The nationwide chain has since gone bankrupt.) Engel eventually bought his shirt at a small specialty store "where the courteous and helpful staff made shopping much more enjoyable."

       When Dawn McCoy-Ullrich of Hinton, Alta., discovered that a computer mouse she had bought with a new computer was incompatible, she returned it to the store. Told she would be charged a 20 percent restocking fee, she balked -- then fumed when the clerk said, "Well, it's not as if you're a good customer or anything!" Says McCoy-Ullrich: "Needless to say, I bought my next computer elsewhere."

       People we talked to on both sides of the counter concurred that salespeople are less courteous than they once were. But thanks in large part to competition from successful service-oriented operations like Wal-Mart and Home Depot, Canadian retailers are now stressing courtesy.

       The Wait of the World. "If there's one thing about shopping that drives me nuts," says Sandy Merry, owner of a pet-supply store at the Stone Road Mall in Guelph, Ont., "it's when there are long lines at checkout counters and the management does nothing about it." Merry echoes the feelings of almost every shopper we talked to.

       A Yarmouth, N.S., mother dashed into a clearance store in downtown Yarmouth to buy laundry detergent that was on sale. She was pressed for time and had her two young children with her. She scooped up the detergent and went to the front of the store only to find more than ten people waiting impatiently at the only checkout -- of the store's four -- that was manned.

       Other shoppers complained as they stood in line. Two women in front of her put their goods down and left the store empty-handed. Another employee was finally called over to man a second cash, but this disgruntled customer has not forgotten her long wait. "I won't go back."

       Donna Smith, director of the School of Retail Management at Ryerson University in Toronto, says the chain of service starts with the store's manager: "If the manager understands the importance of good service, this will be reflected the minute you enter the store. Good customer service comes from the top down."

       Smith recently witnessed this "top down" concept when she went to a Toronto shoe store. She reports receiving "adequate" service from a clerk when she bought a pair of shoes. While she was paying for the shoes, however, the store's manager made a point of asking her, "Have you found everything you were looking for?" When she told him she hadn't, he personally helped her find a second pair of shoes. "He made another sale -- and gained a loyal customer," says Smith.

       Wal-Mart employees in Brandon, Man., keep a keen eye on traffic flow and make sure that enough checkout counters are open to keep shoppers flowing smoothly and quickly.

       "I've had to wait in lines at other stores and know how annoying it can be," says the store's customer-service manager, a 20-year veteran of the retail industry. "No matter what we sell, the customer's last impression of us is at the checkout."

       What's Going On? Studies confirm what shoppers and customer-oriented retailers instinctively know: Shopping is a social experience, not merely the transfer of goods. The marketplace has always been one of civilization's most important social centres-the place where we most frequently interact with strangers.

       Despite the rise of television, catalogue and Internet buying, shoppers want to be among people. And the moments that make or break the experience involve how they are treated.

       Ryerson's Donna Smith says that successful retailers often offer their employees a chance to participate in the company's success -- via stock options or profit-sharing programs -- and make sure they understand how important customer service is. "Knowledgeable managers treat employees as 'internal customers' and strive to keep them happy," says Smith. "A happy employee is more likely to create a shopping environment that satisfies customers -- and that means higher profits."

       The sad fact is stores can get away with poor customer service because we let them. "Things are changing," notes John Williams, whose company has identified a growing group of "vigilante consumers" who vote with their feet when dissatisfied. But many shoppers we interviewed admitted they returned to stores where service was poor.

       Get Treated Right! Here are three weapons that customers can wield in the battle for better service:

       1. Complain. Very few wronged customers -- Tracey Conners of The Corporate Research Group estimates no more than seven percent -- formally complain. Most of us decide it's not worth our time.

       But top management at most of the retailers mentioned in this story were genuinely concerned about incidents where service had fallen short, and they were eager to redress the problem. So make the call, write the letter or send the e-mail.

       2. Be civil. There is no evidence that the decline in manners began with store clerks. Natasha Brown, 21, a Zellers cashier in Brooks, Alta., recalls how a customer screamed at her and raised her fists after Brown explained that a toy the shopper had chosen was not on sale. "The customer is not always right," she says.

       3. Take your business elsewhere. Many retailers count on you to stay with them out of habit, regardless of how satisfied you are with their customer service. But think about it: Shoppers have never had so many choices.

WHEN JOHN LEACH, manager of Sears at the West Edmonton Mall, hires salespeople, he looks for people with "that special something."

       "They have to really enjoy helping people. There's no great secret to good customer service; it's treating people as you'd like to be treated."

What do you think of the state of customer service in Canadian retail stores? To post your views, use the submission box in Join the Debate. Your comments may be used in a future issue of Reader's Digest magazine.