Clean up in aisle two

Bluffton Today column, February 2, 2007

I popped into one of our local food stores on Saturday for a few items. Prepare yourself. I am getting ready to complain and I know that some of you go berserk when I name names so I figured we could play elimination. Said food store is not Piggly Wiggly, Publix, or Food Lion.

Anyway, in an effort to get in and out quickly, Joe and I chose the self checkout lane. Every time we attempt to self-check we hit a stumbling block. This time was no different. We had only two items left to scan and I thought we were going to be home free and then it happened. The light lit up, the screen flashed “ask for cashier help” and we were stuck. “Ask for cashier help” would be an easy enough task, except that said cashier sits up on a stool like a lifeguard. He watches the action but I never see him jump in the pool, he doesn’t react to anyone who needs help.

Another woman trapped at the self-checkout next to ours exchanged some choice words with the cashier and that got me thinking …

What price do we pay for customer service these days? If I am paying good money in the food store and I have even elected to do the scanning and bagging myself, do you think it is too much to ask for a little customer service when my lane lights up and the screen starts flashing like an amusement park ride? I think not.

Now you know that I am not one to keep my mouth shut, so in a more than conversational tone I pointed out the problems with the self-checkout lanes. Of course, no one who worked there was listening, so my only conclusion was to write about it.

Sunday morning we headed out again to run some errands. This time, Neighbors Gas Station and Car Wash was on the agenda – the “almost spring” weather that arrived a few weeks ago had dusted my car with a good coat of pollen and it was a little embarrassing.

Talk about a customer service 180, this place is awesome (did I really just use that word?). A young man took our “order” for the super-duper wash and from that point forward there were no less than three employees working on our car, vacuuming, dusting, window washing. This was customer service at its best. The employees all appeared to be teenagers and they were kind, considerate and smiling the whole time. And it was frigid on Sunday - not the ideal weather for a car wash.

We tipped them well and as we pulled away Joe and I talked about how this great experience was such a contradiction to the previous day’s checkout debacle.

So, why is customer service such a hard concept to grasp these days?

Interestingly a few days before these events, I was in a meeting with the CEO of the company I work for. He mentioned that he doesn’t like when people reply to a request with, “No problem.” I did a quick scan of my brain to calculate how many times I had said that to him as he continued, “By saying ‘no problem’, we imply that there could be a problem, but we will attempt to avoid it.”

He makes a lot of sense (probably why he is the CEO) and as I replayed that conversation in my head I realized that perhaps customer service is lacking because we anticipate the worst. Instead we should anticipate the best and make customer service “our pleasure.”

Geesh, the Southern way is rubbing off on me, bless my heart.