A slap in the face from town centre shop!
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The tills is NOT the best place to do your paperwork, especially when you are the ONLY cashier on them, as previously stated by the original poster.
@zinger 18471 wrote:
Blame the bosses not the staff. How would you like to try to concentrate on important paperwork when you keep getting interrupted? They would much rather spend the time looking after the customers who pay their wages in the long run but the paper/computer work still has to be done. Often there is a cut off time for book orders to be placed & customers want their books etc tomorrow. Would you rather customers use the internet to order and we lose our bookshops?
@justjojo2011 18545 wrote:
The tills is NOT the best place to do your paperwork, especially when you are the ONLY cashier on them, as previously stated by the original poster.
So what do you suggest she do Jo-Jo? If it was anything like where I worked she was probably working through her lunch hour unpaid. Perhaps it would be better to close the shop.
If you are on the tills as the ONLY cashier, then your ultimate goal is to serve the customer. Without the customers, you don’t have a job.
@zinger 18547 wrote:
So what do you suggest she do Jo-Jo? If it was anything like where I worked she was probably working through her lunch hour unpaid. Perhaps it would be better to close the shop.
It is a lose, lose situation for the bookshop. Good customer service demands customer first, phone second, computer/paperwork last. One assistant. Without the computer/paperwork & phone, no customers special orders or stock, customer dissatisfaction. Customer goes elsewhere ie supermarket for papers, magazines, CD’s & paperbacks. The solitary bookseller is left with difficult to obtain special orders which they don’t have time to process, less & less staff & shop closes. On your conscience be it.
Of course good customer service demands the customer come first. Why would it expect anything else? Without the customer, you’re pretty much standing in a building look like a prat.
All aspects do need to be considered but telling someone to use the self serve tills, especially in an abrupt manner, is it appears was used, is NOT the way forward. What if there is an issue at the self serve till? Who is going to stop their paperwork to sort that out? Perhaps, they should do the job they are paid to do? Their job title is not, paperwork person, but Store Assistant.. maybe they should assist?
@zinger 18566 wrote:
It is a lose, lose situation for the bookshop. Good customer service demands customer first, phone second, computer/paperwork last. One assistant. Without the computer/paperwork & phone, no customers special orders or stock, customer dissatisfaction. Customer goes elsewhere ie supermarket for papers, magazines, CD’s & paperbacks. The solitary bookseller is left with difficult to obtain special orders which they don’t have time to process, less & less staff & shop closes. On your conscience be it.
It may well be that this Multiple is now suffering what the small shops like mine take for granted. I open at 9 (or 10), don’t have any dinner hour, deal with the customers and do orders and paperwork at the counter. Sometimes it is difficult to do the latter because the phone is going and there is a customer at the counter. In a perfect world, the customer always comes first, but there are times when the paperwork or the orders have to take priority (or the customers won’t get them as promised).
I quite agree with the remarks about putting customers first, but it is not always that easy and juggling around the conundrum before you is vital.
@Rex Ham 18364 wrote:
You know how I, along with others on here often bang on here about supporting town centre shops. Well, here’s a slap in the face for me: Today, I was shopping in WHSmith and bought some stationary and magazines. I went to the only staffed till (although the lady was doing some paperwork)and the assistant said I should go to the self serve till. I said I’d rather be served. The reply astounded me “I’m busy, you’ll have to wait”.
My reply “Well maybe I’ll spend my money somewhere else”.
I’d have done the exact same thing.
To be honest I think that place is on its last legs. Remember when it used to be located on Regent Street? A very much larger store that always seemed to be overflowing with customers. Even after they moved to their current location, it was a very good store (remember the restaurant?).
It never really seemed like the same place after the fire.
Something is going on there now because they’ve closed upstairs and moved the books downstairs. Probably a change for the worse.Some interesting replies to my original post, and I take on board that fewer staff have to do more jobs in every store in town. I am sure this assistant was completing an important task as far as she and the store were concerned. I would not have expected her to drop everything immediately. All she needed to do was look at me and say something like “give me a moment and I’ll be with you” or some other acknowledgement of my presence. She didn’t even look at me when she sent me to the self serve till, which I do have a problem with. That’s a whole new post!!
I’ve had my say directly with WHSmith, however, the main point of my original post was that I am a staunch supporter of our town centre and it needs more people to use it. It also needs shops which make you want to go into them and spend your money. You only have to look at the number of empty shops in town to see the effect of “no spend”. That’s why businesses are in business, not to fill a shop, but to make money. There are lots of elements to make a shop/business successful and one of those is the staff. There is one stall in the Butchers market I always use because the staff (who don’t know me from Adam) engage me and offer some banter or even just a smile! They often introduce me to another product, which increases my spend. It’s called customer service and however it’s delivered it’s vital. That’s one of the things which will make our town centre more vital and used.
Now, can someone help me off my soap box please…..!
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