Customer Service

One of the front page stories in the local paper today is about how people are not generally satisfied with the level of service in Singapore. I fully agree. It said that retail is actually much worse than food and beverage - I do not agree with that. More often than not, I feel like I'm putting someone off when I order something. But...I have experienced totally opposite retail/service customer experiences in the past few days.

I was looking for shoes. My size is 40 or 41, and most places just don't carry that size. I want black sandals that look nice but are comfortable. I went into multiple stores looking for this the other day, and most of them either ignored me, totally laughed when I said how big my foot is, or showed me the ugliest shoes I have ever seen. They seemed to not listen to me at all, or not want to help me find what I want. I was thinking - in the good business school way that my brain works - wow - their incentives must not be set up properly. Clearly they are not rewarded for selling items, and they must be getting a flat hourly wage.

Then, I had two amazing customer experiences. I went for my healthy foot massage two days ago, and the guy asked me if I had been there before. He remembered that I had lived in Bedok. I was only there once, and it was probably about a YEAR ago (if my blog search function worked, I would search, but it's not...). I was VERY impressed. They see a lot of people. By the way - I felt like the massage was very hard, but I felt that he was probably doing it like that for a reason. Finally - 20 minutes into it - he said, "wow. You can take very hard." Well, then don't do it so hard! Now I have bruises on some parts of my knees and ankles. It was good, though. No worries.

Then, yesterday, I went to get new running shoes. I went to a store called Running Lab. The woman evaluated how I walk and run on a treadmill. She looked closely at my orthotics (ew) (sp?), and she recommended a few different kinds of shoes. I think that the whole thing took over an hour - but luckily I'm unemployed and don't have anything else to do. Ultimately she found me a great pair of shoes that were on sale for some reason - and they let you run on the treadmill with them for a week and bring them back if they don't work. That's seriously good customer service. I was impressed.

So? What's the moral? I think that companies need to give their staff incentives to sell items. I think that they need training in understanding customers' needs. I think that there should be a tipping culture here - at least in food and bev, so people WANT to do a good job (same incentive piece, but incentivized by the customers instead). I would also like to see statistics on the woman who helped me at the running store vs someone who just simply suggests shoes. Who sells more? She spent a LONG time helping me, and I thought she could have probably sold other shoes in that time, but by the time she was finished with me, there was no WAY I was NOT going to buy a pair of shoes. When someone spends that much time with you, you feel obligated. I wonder if that is better for business or worse. Instinct tells me better, but I suppose it has to be done in moderation - i.e. she can't spend THAT much time with me.