Midterm Assessment

Danielle Gagnon

Mrs. Slater

Customer Service

29 October 2010

Midterm Assessment

My friends and I were shopping for friendship bracelets last year.  We went to one store and we couldn’t find anything so we decided to go to one next to it.  We all walked through the door and not enough ten seconds inside of the store we heard, “you need to leave.  If you’re getting a drink get it and go.”  When we went back to the assistant manager she said they have the right to tell people to leave since they are a private property.  Needless to say I’ve never been back there and don’t plan on it.

The only possible service culture this business had was being a freezer.  There’s no better way to make someone never want to come back than to tell them to leave right after they entered the store.  They may have had job knowledge but they didn’t give us the opportunity to see that and they definitely did not have the proper customer service personality.

As well when we spoke to the assistant manager later she showed no concern for our situation.  She froze us out by having no personality and because it was clear that their business did not value their customers or believe in the adage that the customer is always right or comes first.

The second law of service states that “first impressions are the most important ones”.  This applied because their first impression made me not want to go back and I have not gone into another store of the same name since. 

They lost a potentially valuable customer and once I have a steady career and more disposable income I’ll still remember how they treated me and my friends.  That day they lost five customers and thus those five customers lifetime value not to mention the impressions that we gave our friends and family when we told them what happened.

They had no courtesy or empathy at all.  The employee we dealt with did not attend to our needs and had no manners at all.  If they really had an issue with us being in their store, no matter how illegitimate the reason may have been, they could have at least said please and they didn’t even do that.

When we went back to the store to speak with the assistant manager she had no empathy for what happened and didn’t even apologize.  She didn’t put herself in our shoes or attempt to make up for the poor service we received before.

In the first instance where we were told to leave it’s clear that the use of tactful language was not prevalent or effective at all.  In the second instance where we spoke to the assistant manager her language was less abrupt but still wasn’t what we should have heard.  She should have apologized and explained that there was a policy but should have said that she will discuss with her employees on how to properly put that policy into affect.

What the employee could have done would have simply been to ask us what we were looking for and remove all of their skepticism immediately.  The use of any attempt to receive feedback would have been much easier.

With the assistant manager she had us telling her exactly what went wrong and chose to do nothing about it.  Our feedback could have definitely improved their service and how their employees treat their customers or potential customers in our case.  They could have used what we said and trained their employees on the proper policies and the proper procedures of those policies and how to communicate with tactful language.