Customer Service Stories (week 4)
Value Shop – Jia Hong
Background
Last Week, three customers patronize our shop and two of them wanted to purchase running shorts. They knew what they want to buy, but they are unsure of their sizes for it. As there is no fitting room available in our shop, and my team mate had gone to the washroom, I was left alone managing the shop and handling this issue.
Action
Despite the fact that these two customers are my friends, I did not allow them to take the merchandise and proceed to the washroom for trying. Instead, I asked for their admin card and I hold onto it while they went to the washroom and try out their size. Upon return, they were very happy and proceeded to make payment.
Learning points
Through this experience, I learnt that customer service can be flexible. There are always different options that we can apply indifferent situations.
Other alternatives
In addition, we can let the customers make payment first, and after which they can proceed to try their clothes. If the size does not fit, we can make an exchange for the customers. Moreover, we can also borrow Giordano’s fitting rooms but under the companion from our outlet.
Friendz - Jennifer
One of the hand phone charms which we sell in the outlet contains a grain of rice which allows customer to customize wordings in it. However, this customization process would take one week before it is ready for collection.
One of our customers expressed interest on the hand phone charm and demanded it to be collected within the week. However, the customization is prepared by our supplier, and thus we have minimal influence in shortening the delivery lead time. In order to provide good customer relationship, I informed the customer in a polite way to leave her contact number with us while we highlight to the supplier if he could assist to deliver the ready product within the week. After much consideration, the customer decided to purchase it and we managed to close the sale.
Learning Point
I learnt that it is essential for a service provider to be patient and courteous in explaining the situation to customers and seek for their understanding. In this way, the customer will not have an unhappy shopping experience in the store and would patronize the store again.
Bazaar – Ezzah
Background or Customer Situation
Sometime yesterday, in midst of the late afternoon, a middle-aged woman walked into Bazaar. By standard procedure in conjunction to service, it is important that we stay close to the customer should assistance be required. Nevertheless, the woman readily claimed politely that she was just browsing and there was no need for us to shadow her. Consequently, we gave her personal space yet opened our arms to questions and suggestions. After ten minutes of browsing, she finally settled on a fetching magenta Adidas sports shirt.
Problem Identification
She was inquisitive and eager to find out the price of the item. The item did not have a price tag. In that event, I went to inspect the price through the POS system (price check) and to my surprise , I discovered that the item was captured inside the POS. It was a total embarrassment and disgrace upon both service and product knowledge.
Instantaneously, I apologised for the inconvenience and hurried over to Inventory Management (IM) to uncover the retail price of the item. Nonetheless, IM was not comfortable to reveal the price and hence, I had to seek Ms Lim for her assistance in this matter.
Through some checking, it was ascertained that the price of the sports shirt was a whopping $69, excluding the 10% discount rate. I was particularly mentally disturbed because I had comforted the woman earlier that the price of item would not exceed $30 to $40 range.
At this juncture, it was past fifteen minutes since the price check was done. I rushed back to Bazaar to let known the price of the shirt. The woman was surprised by the price and said she might consider because the price was too high.
Solution & Outcome
To make up for the delay, I showed her around the store and engaged in a friendly chat. In turn, I found out that she was very interested in purchasing a swimsuit for her seven year old son.
I gave her honest recommendations and hot picks for the month. through the buying process, she got hold of a blue surf shirt and Lemon Japanese Sweets. This time, the sales was closed perfectly without any discrepancies and the woman who had spent close to thirty minutes in the store was very pleased with the service we managed to successfully deliver across her stay in Bazaar.
No doubt that there were loopholes however; it was the good make-up that derived a high customer satisfaction level. This brings me to the quotation by Peter Drucker; “Quality in a service or product is not what you put in but what the client or customer gets out of it!” From this, we learn that it is always a golden priority to make the customer leave with a sense of contentment regardless of whatever happens in between.
Learning points
Prior to retailing, the prime learning lesson lies in the importance of price tags. One must never be complacent when it comes to double-checking the effectiveness of the barcode. At times, even IM might fail to include it into the central system which slows down the entire process and it leads to prolonged customer waiting time.
To save the hassle from redundant activities, everyone should double-check price tags regularly to increase efficiency. Once the fundamentals of the store are done properly, there will be hardly any loopholes within the process.
Secondly, never be afraid of mistakes and apologise for the mess caused when an unfortunate incident has take place. Even simple recommendations might snatch a purchase from the customer because we never know what they might have in mind. In this case, it was the swimsuit. If I had given up from embarrassment earlier on and failed to make recommendations, I might not have closed the sales. In the retail industry, the phrase “Once bitten twice shy” should never come into consideration.
Fusion- Aashika Elango
A nervy situation, it was a great delight to learn that a bad customer service experience can transform to be a great opportunity. My team mate had left me to manage the store alone as she had to meet up with the inventory management team to return a large quantity of slow- moving items in the outlet. As expected it took her some time to verify details of each and every stock with the IM team before she returned. Meanwhile, I had to serve the first customer of the day who came to purchase an earphone for his Mp3 player.
As our outlet was running the Back to School Promotions for this week, I highlighted some of the earphones that were on discounts and also the most popular choices among students in order to help my first customer make a buying decision. Upon the purchase of the Qinet earphones, I handed him his change and the receipt.
I informed and shared with him about the 7 day exchange policy for the purchased products and handed the receipt over to him. However, he declined to accept it and after much explanation, he decided to accept the receipt but he discarded it into the dustbin outside the outlet.
Within 15 minutes, he visited the store again in requesting for an exchange of earphone claiming that the earphone input jack did not fit his Mp3 player. I informed the customer that I would need the original receipt for verification before I can carry out any exchange transaction. The customer argued that though he does not have the receipt but he holds the original packaging.
As I had noticed he had thrown the receipt into the bin earlier, out of goodwill I decided to help him search for it in the dustbin. Thankfully, I did not have any customers in my outlet during that period which allows me to assist him in searching.
I was glad that the receipt was able to retrieve from the bin, and the customer continues to search for a suitable earphone in the outlet. In his search, he found out none of the earphone packaging had the earphone’s input jack facing out. Thus, he was unable to make a decision on which earphone to be exchanged.
The customer seeks for my assistance to source for a suitable earphone for his Mp3. Although I had been in the store for three weeks, I still in the learning progress in understanding and improving on my product knowledge. My inadequate product knowledge is unable to assist the customer in his buying decision as I’m unsure which input jack will be small enough to fit into his player.
Keeping in mind about what I learnt during my customer service workshop, I calmed myself down and proceeded to offer him a helping hand although I was in the verge of freaking out.
I smiled to the customer to ease the tension and began opening up each package of earphone input jack to let him see which earphone suits his player. To my surprise, he is totally unsure what the size of his input jack is! As a result, he had to leave all the earphones lying around so that he can go get his Mp3 player.
As soon as he was back we managed to find the right earphone and I plugged it in for him to test before making a purchase so that such a situation could be avoided in future. Upon making payment, he realized that he did not enough money and I had already entered the transaction into the POS machine.
The customer dashed out of the outlet to borrow money from his friend. Before he came back, I had customers in my outlet wanting to make a purchase. Thus, I had to cancel his transaction and carry on with the other transactions first. When he returned, I asked him to hold on while I am doing the other sales transactions. After which, I confirmed with him his mode of payment, the amount of the product and the amount he will be passing to me before proceeding with the transaction.
When customers usually have a bad experience in an outlet, their expectations are lowered. In fact, in this case, it was an opportunity for me to win customers and generate positive word- of- mouth. This hinges on the salesperson that has to take the initiative.
For me, I was lucky as the customer was delighted with my customer service and brought more of his friends to the outlet the next day who bought flash drives and many other products causing us to hit a very high sale for that day. He also commented that I provided very good service to him to his friends.
Learning Points:
· Take the initiative to fix the problem rather than trying to explain to the customer that it is difficult to be fixed. Customers will feel satisfied that we are trying to help them.
· Be the best product library as long as you are in the retail industry. Customers expect us to know better about the product than them. Thus, they will want us to provide them with all the information they require.
· Ensure that the customer has adequate money to pay before carrying out a transaction by probing questions like, “Payment mode will be?”, “The total amount will be”, so that they know that they have the right amount to be paid.
Giordano - Stephanie
A female customer enters our shop and we greeted her as what we always do. She seems to be in a rush hence one of us tries to approach her to lend our assistance. She told us that she is looking for a top which is not too casual as she will be having it for a class meeting later on. She also shared with us that she would like the top not to be too short as that is the main reason for her patronage.
As there is no other customer around, the three of us start to find some suitable clothing and try to complement the top with a jacket. After matching the top according to her preference, she decided to try on the clothes. She seems to be satisfied with it and decided to wear it straight. We assisted to remove the price tag for her and she proceeds to make a payment. She shared with us that she is satisfied with our service and will visit again soon.
Pretty face
A group of staff came to our store and one of them caught an eye in the SASA Anniversary Bag. We went forward to promote the bag features and benefits to her such as the bigger bag is more functional and is big enough to contain A4 size document.
After some promoting, she finally decided to get the big anniversary bag. As the bag is a purchase with purchase item, she started to look for other items in our shop to purchase. At the same time, she asked her fellow colleagues to take a look at the bags. Eventually, the whole group of staff purchased the bag from our store, along with other items as well.
Moreover, the ongoing promotions had allowed us to successfully sell a GUCCI Perfume. However, the discount was not reflected in the POS System. We explained the situation to the customer and he decided to buy the other GUCCI perfume we recommended.
Learning points:
Through this process, we learnt how to deal with unexpected situations and we understand how to think on the spot and make decision to satisfy our customers' enquiries.
We learnt that good customer service is important as customers will feel appreciated and share their experience with others and hence promoting our service through word of mouth.
Cheers
We encountered a lecturer who wanted to purchase Panadol pills. After browsing through the various types of he decided to purchase the cold relief Panadol. At the point of purchase, I found out that the price stated on the price tag did not tally with the price that was shown on the POS system. Immediately, I apologized and explained that there is a mistake on the current price tag. I then informed him the correct amount. He was kind enough not to reprimand me and purchased the item
Learning Points:
From this incident, I learnt that we should always update our price tags and do regular checks on them to ensure customer satisfaction. This is to ensure our daily operations run smoothly. Moreover, it is essential that we perform a price enquiry in the POS before confirming the prices with the customer.
Background
Last Week, three customers patronize our shop and two of them wanted to purchase running shorts. They knew what they want to buy, but they are unsure of their sizes for it. As there is no fitting room available in our shop, and my team mate had gone to the washroom, I was left alone managing the shop and handling this issue.
Action
Despite the fact that these two customers are my friends, I did not allow them to take the merchandise and proceed to the washroom for trying. Instead, I asked for their admin card and I hold onto it while they went to the washroom and try out their size. Upon return, they were very happy and proceeded to make payment.
Learning points
Through this experience, I learnt that customer service can be flexible. There are always different options that we can apply indifferent situations.
Other alternatives
In addition, we can let the customers make payment first, and after which they can proceed to try their clothes. If the size does not fit, we can make an exchange for the customers. Moreover, we can also borrow Giordano’s fitting rooms but under the companion from our outlet.
Friendz - Jennifer
One of the hand phone charms which we sell in the outlet contains a grain of rice which allows customer to customize wordings in it. However, this customization process would take one week before it is ready for collection.
One of our customers expressed interest on the hand phone charm and demanded it to be collected within the week. However, the customization is prepared by our supplier, and thus we have minimal influence in shortening the delivery lead time. In order to provide good customer relationship, I informed the customer in a polite way to leave her contact number with us while we highlight to the supplier if he could assist to deliver the ready product within the week. After much consideration, the customer decided to purchase it and we managed to close the sale.
Learning Point
I learnt that it is essential for a service provider to be patient and courteous in explaining the situation to customers and seek for their understanding. In this way, the customer will not have an unhappy shopping experience in the store and would patronize the store again.
Bazaar – Ezzah
Background or Customer Situation
Sometime yesterday, in midst of the late afternoon, a middle-aged woman walked into Bazaar. By standard procedure in conjunction to service, it is important that we stay close to the customer should assistance be required. Nevertheless, the woman readily claimed politely that she was just browsing and there was no need for us to shadow her. Consequently, we gave her personal space yet opened our arms to questions and suggestions. After ten minutes of browsing, she finally settled on a fetching magenta Adidas sports shirt.
Problem Identification
She was inquisitive and eager to find out the price of the item. The item did not have a price tag. In that event, I went to inspect the price through the POS system (price check) and to my surprise , I discovered that the item was captured inside the POS. It was a total embarrassment and disgrace upon both service and product knowledge.
Instantaneously, I apologised for the inconvenience and hurried over to Inventory Management (IM) to uncover the retail price of the item. Nonetheless, IM was not comfortable to reveal the price and hence, I had to seek Ms Lim for her assistance in this matter.
Through some checking, it was ascertained that the price of the sports shirt was a whopping $69, excluding the 10% discount rate. I was particularly mentally disturbed because I had comforted the woman earlier that the price of item would not exceed $30 to $40 range.
At this juncture, it was past fifteen minutes since the price check was done. I rushed back to Bazaar to let known the price of the shirt. The woman was surprised by the price and said she might consider because the price was too high.
Solution & Outcome
To make up for the delay, I showed her around the store and engaged in a friendly chat. In turn, I found out that she was very interested in purchasing a swimsuit for her seven year old son.
I gave her honest recommendations and hot picks for the month. through the buying process, she got hold of a blue surf shirt and Lemon Japanese Sweets. This time, the sales was closed perfectly without any discrepancies and the woman who had spent close to thirty minutes in the store was very pleased with the service we managed to successfully deliver across her stay in Bazaar.
No doubt that there were loopholes however; it was the good make-up that derived a high customer satisfaction level. This brings me to the quotation by Peter Drucker; “Quality in a service or product is not what you put in but what the client or customer gets out of it!” From this, we learn that it is always a golden priority to make the customer leave with a sense of contentment regardless of whatever happens in between.
Learning points
Prior to retailing, the prime learning lesson lies in the importance of price tags. One must never be complacent when it comes to double-checking the effectiveness of the barcode. At times, even IM might fail to include it into the central system which slows down the entire process and it leads to prolonged customer waiting time.
To save the hassle from redundant activities, everyone should double-check price tags regularly to increase efficiency. Once the fundamentals of the store are done properly, there will be hardly any loopholes within the process.
Secondly, never be afraid of mistakes and apologise for the mess caused when an unfortunate incident has take place. Even simple recommendations might snatch a purchase from the customer because we never know what they might have in mind. In this case, it was the swimsuit. If I had given up from embarrassment earlier on and failed to make recommendations, I might not have closed the sales. In the retail industry, the phrase “Once bitten twice shy” should never come into consideration.
Fusion- Aashika Elango
A nervy situation, it was a great delight to learn that a bad customer service experience can transform to be a great opportunity. My team mate had left me to manage the store alone as she had to meet up with the inventory management team to return a large quantity of slow- moving items in the outlet. As expected it took her some time to verify details of each and every stock with the IM team before she returned. Meanwhile, I had to serve the first customer of the day who came to purchase an earphone for his Mp3 player.
As our outlet was running the Back to School Promotions for this week, I highlighted some of the earphones that were on discounts and also the most popular choices among students in order to help my first customer make a buying decision. Upon the purchase of the Qinet earphones, I handed him his change and the receipt.
I informed and shared with him about the 7 day exchange policy for the purchased products and handed the receipt over to him. However, he declined to accept it and after much explanation, he decided to accept the receipt but he discarded it into the dustbin outside the outlet.
Within 15 minutes, he visited the store again in requesting for an exchange of earphone claiming that the earphone input jack did not fit his Mp3 player. I informed the customer that I would need the original receipt for verification before I can carry out any exchange transaction. The customer argued that though he does not have the receipt but he holds the original packaging.
As I had noticed he had thrown the receipt into the bin earlier, out of goodwill I decided to help him search for it in the dustbin. Thankfully, I did not have any customers in my outlet during that period which allows me to assist him in searching.
I was glad that the receipt was able to retrieve from the bin, and the customer continues to search for a suitable earphone in the outlet. In his search, he found out none of the earphone packaging had the earphone’s input jack facing out. Thus, he was unable to make a decision on which earphone to be exchanged.
The customer seeks for my assistance to source for a suitable earphone for his Mp3. Although I had been in the store for three weeks, I still in the learning progress in understanding and improving on my product knowledge. My inadequate product knowledge is unable to assist the customer in his buying decision as I’m unsure which input jack will be small enough to fit into his player.
Keeping in mind about what I learnt during my customer service workshop, I calmed myself down and proceeded to offer him a helping hand although I was in the verge of freaking out.
I smiled to the customer to ease the tension and began opening up each package of earphone input jack to let him see which earphone suits his player. To my surprise, he is totally unsure what the size of his input jack is! As a result, he had to leave all the earphones lying around so that he can go get his Mp3 player.
As soon as he was back we managed to find the right earphone and I plugged it in for him to test before making a purchase so that such a situation could be avoided in future. Upon making payment, he realized that he did not enough money and I had already entered the transaction into the POS machine.
The customer dashed out of the outlet to borrow money from his friend. Before he came back, I had customers in my outlet wanting to make a purchase. Thus, I had to cancel his transaction and carry on with the other transactions first. When he returned, I asked him to hold on while I am doing the other sales transactions. After which, I confirmed with him his mode of payment, the amount of the product and the amount he will be passing to me before proceeding with the transaction.
When customers usually have a bad experience in an outlet, their expectations are lowered. In fact, in this case, it was an opportunity for me to win customers and generate positive word- of- mouth. This hinges on the salesperson that has to take the initiative.
For me, I was lucky as the customer was delighted with my customer service and brought more of his friends to the outlet the next day who bought flash drives and many other products causing us to hit a very high sale for that day. He also commented that I provided very good service to him to his friends.
Learning Points:
· Take the initiative to fix the problem rather than trying to explain to the customer that it is difficult to be fixed. Customers will feel satisfied that we are trying to help them.
· Be the best product library as long as you are in the retail industry. Customers expect us to know better about the product than them. Thus, they will want us to provide them with all the information they require.
· Ensure that the customer has adequate money to pay before carrying out a transaction by probing questions like, “Payment mode will be?”, “The total amount will be”, so that they know that they have the right amount to be paid.
Giordano - Stephanie
A female customer enters our shop and we greeted her as what we always do. She seems to be in a rush hence one of us tries to approach her to lend our assistance. She told us that she is looking for a top which is not too casual as she will be having it for a class meeting later on. She also shared with us that she would like the top not to be too short as that is the main reason for her patronage.
As there is no other customer around, the three of us start to find some suitable clothing and try to complement the top with a jacket. After matching the top according to her preference, she decided to try on the clothes. She seems to be satisfied with it and decided to wear it straight. We assisted to remove the price tag for her and she proceeds to make a payment. She shared with us that she is satisfied with our service and will visit again soon.
Pretty face
A group of staff came to our store and one of them caught an eye in the SASA Anniversary Bag. We went forward to promote the bag features and benefits to her such as the bigger bag is more functional and is big enough to contain A4 size document.
After some promoting, she finally decided to get the big anniversary bag. As the bag is a purchase with purchase item, she started to look for other items in our shop to purchase. At the same time, she asked her fellow colleagues to take a look at the bags. Eventually, the whole group of staff purchased the bag from our store, along with other items as well.
Moreover, the ongoing promotions had allowed us to successfully sell a GUCCI Perfume. However, the discount was not reflected in the POS System. We explained the situation to the customer and he decided to buy the other GUCCI perfume we recommended.
Learning points:
Through this process, we learnt how to deal with unexpected situations and we understand how to think on the spot and make decision to satisfy our customers' enquiries.
We learnt that good customer service is important as customers will feel appreciated and share their experience with others and hence promoting our service through word of mouth.
Cheers
We encountered a lecturer who wanted to purchase Panadol pills. After browsing through the various types of he decided to purchase the cold relief Panadol. At the point of purchase, I found out that the price stated on the price tag did not tally with the price that was shown on the POS system. Immediately, I apologized and explained that there is a mistake on the current price tag. I then informed him the correct amount. He was kind enough not to reprimand me and purchased the item
Learning Points:
From this incident, I learnt that we should always update our price tags and do regular checks on them to ensure customer satisfaction. This is to ensure our daily operations run smoothly. Moreover, it is essential that we perform a price enquiry in the POS before confirming the prices with the customer.
on Thursday, July 23, 2009
We are at week five of our stopover, time flies! And so far we have learnt many things regarding the setup of a real retail store and the backend operations of a retail store.
Today all MSC students are heading to the Stationery and Gift fair at Suntec City for a business assignment and to learn how to source for suppliers. We are all excited to have some hands on experience to speak with suppliers and draw up a business plan.
Keep a look out for our pictures from the stationery fair!
OPS team!
Today all MSC students are heading to the Stationery and Gift fair at Suntec City for a business assignment and to learn how to source for suppliers. We are all excited to have some hands on experience to speak with suppliers and draw up a business plan.
Keep a look out for our pictures from the stationery fair!
OPS team!
Back to School Promotion
on Friday, July 10, 2009
Check out the shopping arcade for new promotions!!
Fusion
Fusion
Pretty Face
Bazaar
Friendz
Cheers
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