Bo­bie-lee Dixon

When will good cus­tomer ser­vice ever ex­ist in T&T? Nu­mer­ous sto­ries have been writ­ten on this top­ic be­fore. Even my col­league, Cherisse Moe, in­tro­duced a poor cus­tomer ser­vice se­ries a few months ago that shook some lo­cal fast food in­dus­tries, and got them to take a sec­ond look at them­selves be­fore treat­ing cus­tomers, who are spend­ing their hard earned mon­ey, with com­plete dis­dain. In T&T when you go to pur­chase some­thing, whether its at a fast food restau­rant, cloth­ing store, shoe store, or even just sim­ply us­ing hired trans­port, the at­ti­tude of these ser­vice providers to pay­ing cus­tomers is to­tal­ly un­ac­cept­able. Cus­tomers are of­ten forced to feel as though they are beg­ging for the ser­vices for which they are ac­tu­al­ly pay­ing.

De­mand good ser­vice

On Eman­ci­pa­tion day I vis­it­ed a phar­ma­cy lo­cat­ed south of In­de­pen­dence Square (cor­ner Char­lotte Street and In­de­pen­dence Square) in Port-of-Spain, to pur­chase a phone card and some vi­t­a­mins. Up­on en­ter­ing the phar­ma­cy I no­ticed three cus­tomers stand­ing at the front the dis­pen­sary area. As I ap­proached the counter I fur­ther no­ticed all the phar­ma­cy at­ten­dants had con­gre­gat­ed in a cor­ner, and the cus­tomers were grum­bling about the bad ser­vice they were re­ceiv­ing. As a per­son who has ze­ro tol­er­ance for poor cus­tomer ser­vice, I im­me­di­ate­ly drew the at­ten­tion of one of the young ladies who even­tu­al­ly came to the counter. I then pro­ceed­ed to ask for the items I want­ed–this was her re­sponse: "I doh think we have dat nuh." Know­ing that I had just seen the same item in the show­case when I en­tered the phar­ma­cy, I asked her to dou­ble check.

Re­turn­ing to the counter with the item, she just dropped it and head­ed back to con­tin­ue her con­ver­sa­tion with her col­leagues about what they were go­ing to have for lunch, leav­ing me and the oth­er cus­tomers just stand­ing there–nev­er mind there was no cashier avail­able ei­ther. Irate now by the en­tire sit­u­a­tion, I cleared my throat and asked her for some as­sis­tance.

This was her re­sponse: "Ah minute please....ste­ups!" I lev­elled with her that it was im­po­lite, rude, and un­pro­fes­sion­al to leave cus­tomers un­at­tend­ed to talk about what she was go­ing to have for lunch. I do not know if this woman didn't get the point, or she was just plain dis­re­spect­ful and lacked cus­tomer ser­vice skills so bad­ly that she didn't even recog­nise her be­hav­iour was un­ac­cept­able and wrong.

Be­cause in­stead of apol­o­gis­ing she fur­ther added, with an at­ti­tude and a whole lot of neck ac­tion, that she was dis­cussing lunch be­cause she hadn't eat­en for the day. An­noyed through the ceil­ing now, I asked her to see her man­ag­er. With more neck ac­tion she said with con­fi­dence: "I'm the su­per­vi­sor." "You're the su­per­vi­sor and that is your be­hav­iour?" I asked. "Yes, yuh want this or not. Look I not sell­ing you...next please," she an­nounced. All the cus­tomers, now irked by this young woman's be­hav­iour, be­gan ar­gu­ing with her and some even walked out of the phar­ma­cy with me.

On that day, that young woman's at­ti­tude caused the own­er of that busi­ness to not on­ly lose sale, but al­so to lose po­ten­tial loy­al cus­tomers.

Cus­tomers do not have to know

Re­gard­less of what your day was like as a cus­tomer ser­vice rep­re­sen­ta­tive, no cus­tomer de­serves the back­lash of your hunger, painful feet, dis­gust for the job, or an­i­mos­i­ty to­ward your boss. We just want to be cor­dial­ly served. It is not our fault you have ex­pe­ri­enced what­ev­er you ex­pe­ri­enced dur­ing the course of your day. Re­mem­ber, we are spend­ing our hard earned mon­ey in a time where cap­i­tal­ism has cer­tain­ly gone mad. The least we ex­pect is to be treat­ed with re­spect and shown that you val­ue our pa­tron­age. A well treat­ed cus­tomer will re­turn to give you more mon­ey, and more mon­ey, and more mon­ey.