Devoted to Managers and those that seek to improve their management skills

What a lot of people don't know concerning customer service is that many times it is business policies themselves that cause more problems than anything else.

In a retail setting a great problem that always arises is that customers are considered intruders rather than the reason the business exists in the first place.

What causes this mentality? Usually company policy. Let me say first though, that you do occasionally get the wrong person for the job who projects themselves as outward and friendly and you find out that once they're on the floor interacting with customers, they are anything but friendly. But I'm not talking about that here.

The thing that happens with customer service is that the company has to receive product, put the product on the sales floor and make sure the product is on the shelve when it's almost out. In other words, all of this has to be done while attempting to service the customer.

I have seen huge companies that cut back on workers so much and the stress level is so high that the employees can't really even function. It's no longer about customer service, it's about being able to survive the shift. And this isn't the exception; it is the norm.

Good employees begin to consider customers an intrusion when they are brought to the place where they simply quit trying because it's humanly impossible to do the job. Time after time I've seen customers walk out of a huge box store because there was one worker in the department and they could only handle one customer at a time. And it was the type of store where every department had the possiblity of customers wanting special orders which could take an hour to get done.

The turnover was so high in the store, and continually is, that there really was no way that the company could really train people. They would get great employees with existing knowledge from previous experiences and work them into the ground, while hoping to have another one come up behind them. This only works for so long before your reputation goes out everywhere to the general working population.

This happens in numerous industries, not only retail. We've got to be much better at understanding and implementing strategies that will ensure retaining great employees while providing great service. To be the source of the problem is astounding and unacceptable if you want to be a great company.