Exceptional employeess can turn a bad day into a good one for your customers

Sometimes it can seem like all customer service is bad customer service, whether it’s on the phone or in person. It’s a rare thing to have three POSITIVE customer experiences in the course of one day, but that’s exactly what happened to me recently. I was, against my will, in a jam-packed grocery store two days before Thanksgiving and I hadn’t slept well the night before. After a morning of hard work, I was only looking forward to getting this arduous chore done so I could go home and nap.

While starting to unload my cart at the register, I handed the busy cashier two items I had decided not to purchase and asked her to set them aside. I then turned to unload my laden cart, only to find that she had, in fact, wrung up the items I had just asked her to set aside. This necessitated her calling over the manager to do a “void” on her cash register. I was NOT in the mood for this, but all the while she was so apologetic. “I am so sorry, I totally misunderstood,” she first said. “I’m sorry you had to wait.”

 

How could I be mad? And, while she continued with my goods, the person bagging my groceries conducted a pleasant conversation with me! My usual experience is that the bagger conducts a loud, often annoying conversation with his/her fellow bagger over at the next register. He was pleasant and cheerful AND he told me in which bag he had placed my eggs! Those two employees had me leaving the store in a good mood, the opposite of what I was upon arriving there. To top it off, the employee rounding up carts in the parking lot decided to lift my many bags out of my cart and hand them to me one at a time as I made room in my trunk. For a brief moment I wondered if I could offer a tip to any or all three of these employees.

Driving home I wondered what training sessions were like at that store. Did those three employees, with diverse duties, constantly get the message that they should make the customers happy? That they should go the extra mile and do something out of the ordinary? Were they given license to chat, admit wrong-doing, go beyond their job description? Or was it that this store happened upon people with exceptional personalities that just shone through naturally? If that was the case, perhaps it was the hiring manager that deserved commendation.

 

If the dedication and effort of those three employees could be bottled and sold, no business would need the services of a mystery shopping service like Customer Perspectives. But, just imagine if that day, that one cashier’s aisle had been “shopped” by a professional who had witnessed these three miracles first-hand. Imagine if the report that resulted could be turned into training and/or incentive programs to make sure it was happening at every register, every time.