Zara JHB is
one of the saving graces of fashion. A cute dress here and a boy-friend blazer
there, at somewhat reasonable prices keep me going back.
However the
shop assistants at Zara are the most sour and morose bunch I have come cross in a
while.
If it’s not the snooty gate keeper at the fitting rooms
unable to even say hello, his interest only on scanning the clothes and
keeping you behind the line; then it’s the sulky walk around-s whom
I thought were there to be my personal shopper, however I
soon realized how wrong I was when a request for a different size led to a
gloomy shop girl dragging herself across the store as though the
sound of her shoes were reminding me how much they didn't need my money.
What a pity and a shame because I really like Zara. But the
clothes aren’t worth the abuse of the fitting room assistant shouting at you to
stay behind the line. I may be a bit sensitive but If I am spending my money I
damn well deserve some respect.
Whether you're spending your cash or not, there's absolutely no excuse for bad service at all, no excuse, and here's why:
ReplyDeleteWorking in customer service is not easy. Having a friendly attitude towards rude customers needs thick skin. Not to mention that sometimes you might start a day with lots of reprimands from the manager just for kicks, a crappy salary that hasn't reflected in your account, long hours, short breaks and so on. One might think that those are enough reasons to mope around the whole day, ignoring customers and having an overal bad attitude. But they're not.
When someone chooses to be in customer service, they need to know and understand what comes with the job, the job title says it all: service the customers NO MATTER WHAT.
The whole thing of "you have a job therefore you're lucky and must be grateful" way of thinking that comes with this self entitlement attitude needs to stop. So you're not getting commission, so what? you're still in the service and therefore you need to represent what the industry is all about. Period. No excuses.
Before I had retail experience, I used to have some empathy but now that I was on the other side for a while, sometimes on my feet from 8:30am to 10pm, I know that bad service is just bad attitude and there's absolutely NO EXCUSE for it. The managers or head office people of Zara or any other retail for that matter need to make sure that they incorporate service training and continuous evaluation and so on into their staff hiring and training policy thingy. Its necessary for business and they need to realise this. I wonder if they have mystery shoppers,hmmm.
I hope your post has a ripple effect that will eventually get the guys at Zara to wake up.
On another note, customers should learn the art of complaining and reprimanding without throwing a 2 year old like tantrum, those are usually ineffective.
Thanks soo much for your comment. Its very educational. Now that I think about it, I also deal with clients in my job..it may not be from a customer service point of view, and being rude to a client would get me fired.
ReplyDeleteI got an overwhelming "I'm better than you" attitude from the Zara bunch. Usually I don't let bad service go unchecked but this time I was dumb struck. How do you report the following: I said hi to the assistant and he just stared back at me with a blank look; or I ask for a different size and and the assistant without even saying she'll be back dragged herself to the store room. *Sigh*