Brace yourself for an old man rant.
Back in January when I turned 60, I warned you this may happen on occasion, and well, here we are. I’m hiking my oversized britches up past my belly button and carping about the whippersnappers and customer service.
But really, it has gotten ridiculous. We all tend to romanticize the past, but I swear I can vividly remember the days when employees at retail stores, restaurants, and other businesses actually cared about your experience there, or at least pretended to. Sometimes they even greeted you, asked if you needed anything, and said, “Thanks.”
Not so much anymore.
Allow me to introduce a few exhibits, from which you will discern that I have pedestrian taste in food and retail stores:
Exhibit A: On a late Sunday afternoon a few weeks ago, my wife and I had gone walking at the Biltmore Estate and wanted to grab something quick to eat on the way home. So we stopped by Wendy’s on Hendersonville Road around 5, went inside and ordered. (Let the early bird specials begin! Told you I’m a geezer.)
One other customer was inside, but the restaurant’s drive-through business was steady. We had ordered burgers and fries — nothing that would take too long to cook — and prepared to wait five minutes or so.
Instead, we waited and waited and waited. Ten minutes, 15, 20. Meanwhile, the drive-through customers were getting food, so I asked what was going on. A cashier said they were short-staffed.
Finally, 22 minutes after ordering – the order time is on your ticket – the food came, and the burgers weren’t even particularly hot. The cashier offered no apologies, no comment at all, really. Certainly no offer of a free Frosty or other comp to take the edge off our irritability.
We definitely won’t be returning anytime soon. Or ever.
Exhibit B: Last Monday during my lunch break, I went up to Lowe’s Home Improvement to get landscaping stones and a yard cart. (Please don’t tell my boss.) I loaded up the stones, went to check out the carts, made a selection, and went inside to pay.
As the carts are locked up out front, the cashier said they’d call an employee to come out and unlock them. We’ll call someone now, the cashier said, instructing me to have my receipt handy.
And then I waited. And waited. And waited. I went back in twice to ask people to send someone out, then a third time. I went back out and an employee came out to help another guy with his cart purchase. He totally ignored me until I told him in somewhat salty language that I’d been waiting over a half hour and could he unlock the damn carts.
He felt it necessary not to apologize but to tell me the lock was actually unlocked, like that would help. After a not-so-nice rant from me about how I actually had a job to get back to, I got the cart, and he did apologize..
But my derriere remained chapped, so I went inside and asked for a manager. I waited another 10 minutes and just gave up after being told he must be in a meeting or something.
Epilogue: It turns out the cart was poorly designed and pretty much unusable to haul landscaping stones, so I had to return it. I’m happy to say that went well.
Exhibit C: I’ll keep this one short and sweet. Walmart has very few cashiers on duty anymore. (Yes, I know some of you consider it an evil corporation, but we all pretty much shop there at some point.) So you’re forced to use self-checkout, and the lines just keep getting longer. An employee told me months ago they just can’t hire enough employees.
Now, instead of just ranting about crappy service, I’d like to point out that some businesses offer excellent customer service. I’ll note the Walmart self-checkout employees do their best to help everybody, and the Biltmore Estate folks are always top-notch.
Trader Joe’s in north Asheville is a nightmare for parking, but inside it always has plenty of employees on the floor and at the registers, and they’re polite and helpful. I know some folks hate Chick-fil-A’s politics, and their donations to charities that have anti-LGBTQ stances were abhorrent, but their restaurants are always clean, the employees well-trained and polite — and they actually get your order correct. They can have 20 cars in the drive-through and you’ll get your food in five minutes.
I’ll also offer broad kudos to Ace Hardware stores and Aldi’s supermarkets, where the employees are always helpful and friendly. Also, two restaurants in my neck of the woods, Blue Sky Cafe and Kosta’s Kitchen, have fantastic employees and service.
I’m going to make a broad categorization here, but I know Trader Joe’s, Aldi, and Chick-fil-A all pay pretty well, and they must emphasize customer service. The two locally owned restaurants I mentioned also clearly value employees who are polite and actually care about their work, as do Ace Hardware stores.
But overall, we’re sliding downhill.
It’s a national problem
“A recent survey shows Americans are more unhappy with the customer service they’re getting than ever,” NPR reported in March 2023, citing the 10th edition of the National Customer Rage Survey, which tracks satisfaction and incivility and is probably the best-named survey I’ve ever heard of. The article notes that:
- 74 percent of Americans say they’ve had product or service problems in the past year. The incidence of problems has more than doubled since 1976.
- And on the other side, consumers are described as increasingly vocal about it — literally. The survey found 43 percent, up from 35 percent in 2015, of customers yelled or raised their voice to express displeasure about their most serious problem.
Hey, waiting more than a half hour for a crappy yard cart will make you raise your voice!
“Across the USA, there is a steady decline in the customer service levels of nearly every type of business,” Thread Connected Marketing states on its website. “Companies just aren’t providing enough attention to giving adequate levels of customer service by phone, online or in person. For the American consumer, substandard service has become the new normal.”
I did try to follow up with Lowe’s via its customer service line. “You can expect a callback in between 39 and 58 minutes,” the automated voice said. I called them at 5:20 p.m. Thursday. They called back at 5:58, when I was eating dinner.
When I called back Friday morning, I got a customer service representative quickly, and she took my complaint. She was located at a call center in the Caribbean, she said, so I’m expecting a quick turnaround on all of this.
When I called the Wendy’s on Hendersonville Road, the shift manager was quite nice and gave me the number for the franchisee, Wendy’s Tarheel Capital. I left two messages for the owner but didn’t hear back by deadline. To be fair, I called on Thursday and Friday, so late in the week.
On its website, Tarheel Capital states: “We manage our business by the Golden Rule, treating others as we would like to be treated, holding ourselves to high ethical standards. We achieve our objectives by employing the best people in the industry, training them effectively and compensating them fairly.”
I’m guessing they would not want to wait over 20 minutes for “fast” food to arrive.
Before I exhaust my rant, let me pause to state that I truly do appreciate the people who are out there working every day in often thankless jobs, and most often because of understaffing, are dealing with irate and uncivil customers. It’s a vicious cycle — companies don’t hire enough people or can’t find enough workers, so those who remain are overworked, sometimes underpaid, and just can’t give customers good service.
A tight labor market
Nathan Ramsey, director of the Mountain Area Workforce Development Board, always has good insights into labor issues, so I reached out to him. The workforce board covers Buncombe, Henderson, Madison, and Transylvania counties
Ramsey noted that the Asheville metro area has the lowest unemployment rate in the state — 3.1 percent — which indicates a “very tight labor market.”
That means employers have trouble finding enough workers.
“There has been increased turnover and employers are in a ‘talent war’ for employees,” Ramsey said via email, adding that we’re near all-time records for the number of people in our labor force, the number of people working, and number of jobs. “Many employers are short staffed which can often lead to customer service challenges.”
A lot of companies do emphasize customer service, but increased turnover and open positions mean customer service suffers, Ramsey said.
“Workers still have significant leverage in the current labor market, so often employers are hesitant to terminate someone for poor performance,” Ramsey said.
Here’s a stat that I found particularly eye-opening: There are about 17,000 job openings in our region, with about 7,000 individuals who are not working who are seeking employment.
So that’s 10,000 openings that are likely to go unfilled.
Ramsey said companies with outstanding customer service invest more in training and development, which is costly. So the companies have to balance how much consumers are willing to pay for top-notch customer service.
“In my conversation with most businesses now, they aren’t struggling to attract business/revenue, their challenge is having the capacity to meet that demand,” Ramsey said. “In this environment as consumers we must exhibit more grace, as these are often the sign of the times.”
“In my conversation with most businesses now, they aren’t struggling to attract business/revenue, their challenge is having the capacity to meet that demand. In this environment as consumers we must exhibit more grace, as these are often the sign of the times.”
Nathan Ramsey, director of the Mountain Area Workforce Development Board
I’m trying, my man, but 35 minutes for someone to unlock the yard carts?
As I suspected, the big-picture situation is unlikely to get any better.
“Long-term this is a demographic challenge, as 10,000-plus Baby Boomers are retiring each day, our birth rates are at near century-level lows, and without migration our nation’s population would be declining,” Ramsey said.
He also emphasized that we have a misconception in America that fewer people are working now than before the pandemic. Our demographics, he says, indicate we’re facing a long-term labor shortage.
“We are at or close to near record employment, number of people in our labor force and number of jobs in the Asheville metro,” Ramsey said.
Nationally, the prime age labor force participation is at 20-plus year highs.
“If that is the case, then why are there so many job openings?” Ramsey said. “Basic answer is employers have been creating jobs faster than labor force growth.”
Some tech areas that boomed during the pandemic are soft now, but we don’t have many of those jobs here. Ramsey said he remembers many employers who said workforce shortages would subside when the enhanced unemployment benefits — remember the $600 a week payments? — went away.
“Later on, when the benefit was reduced, I was skeptical it would make much of a difference,” Ramsey said. “But even I was surprised when those benefits ended, as we saw almost no uptick in hiring, job seeker interest, etc.”
Assuming that people are just lazy means “you have misdiagnosed what ails our labor markets from an employer perspective,” Ramsey said.
I’ll note that Ramsey grew up on a dairy farm in Fairview and worked the farm for years. He half-jokes that “compared to milking cows, I’m probably lazy,” as he doesn’t have to start work at 2 a.m. and work 365 days a year.
Cows don’t stop producing milk so you can go to Myrtle Beach, you know.
“There are generational differences in how people perceive work, and our relationship with work fundamentally changed during the pandemic,” Ramsey said. “I don’t think we are going back to 2019 anytime soon.”
He also cited a Wall Street Journal article from March with the headline, “Americans Don’t Care as Much About Work. And It Isn’t Just Gen Z.” In short, the nature of labor has changed, the journal states, as Americans want more time for leisure and better work-life balance.
As far as paying folks more, Ramsey said employers have to offer competitive wages, and “your best target is workers who aren’t being treated well by their existing employer.”
“There are many more factors than just wages — it is culture, stress, purpose and much more,” Ramsey said, “This is complicated but for lower wage workers, they are struggling during these times of inflation. Labor market data indicates the jobs most unfilled and the greatest imbalance is for the lower paying, customer facing roles.”
So clearly, all of this is incredibly complicated, and we customers need to bolster our patience and kindness. But I think we can agree that waiting nearly 25 minutes for a fast-food burger or 35 minutes for an employee to just show up to help you get something you’ve already paid for is no way to do business.
How about this compromise? I’ll work on my patience and salty language, you train your people in just the most rudimentary principles of customer service. And we’ll all try to get along.
Asheville Watchdog is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and Buncombe County. John Boyle has been covering Asheville and surrounding communities since the 20th century. You can reach him at (828) 337-0941, or via email at jboyle@avlwatchdog.org. The Watchdog’s reporting is made possible by donations from the community. To show your support for this vital public service please visit avlwatchdog.org/donate.
You know, periodically there’s a stink about putting up the Ten Commandments in public places. And I agree, they shouldn’t be. But how about putting up “The Golden Rule” some version of which is part of nearly every religion,
Many of those jobs employ young people. (A great many) young people in our country do not possess basic skills, partly due to being raised by Apple Computers and helicopter parents/soccer moms. You should check out a recent segment on Jimmy Kimmel where young people were asked to address an envelope and place a stamp in its proper place. Sort of hilarious, sort of terrifying. My biggest customer service pet peeve: not being acknowledged by a retail employee or restaurant worker within seconds of entering (when I know they’ve noticed me and think that ignoring me is a good strategy). All it takes is a polite nod, eye contact and perhaps a ‘be right with you’…I could list some Asheville restaurants that will never see my wife and me again.
I enjoy being able to get some news from watchdog but after mailing you a small donation the news stopped coming to my e-mail. Why ?
You are far more likely to get a response and a fix for that if you use the contact us link rather than posting it as a comment on an opinion piece.
Hey John, my experience with customer service is the same as yours, unfortunately.
My example: Amazon returns at Whole Foods market on Hendersonville Road. Amazon has installed a self service return kiosk, which sometimes can have five or more people waiting in line. The Whole Foods employee at the customer service desk initially refused to take my return, referring me to the self-service kiosk. I pressed him a bit and then asked for a manager. He told me he was a manager. I asked for his manager… At that point, he agreed to receive my return, scanned the return code, and I was on my way, which took literally 10 seconds, after 30 seconds of arguing with me.
Guess we should ease up on immigration, then. The answer is so obvious. Tell our politicians.
You forgot to mention Publix, which always has plenty of helpful employees.
Shop local. Buy local. You’re much more likely to get good or even great service. Not always but more more often.
One problem here is corporate —even though there are fewer workers, most of the ones out there have never seen great customer service modeled. We’re going on three generations of people flocking to malls (chain store city) and Walmart (the destroyer for decades of small local businesses that DID used to offer great customer service but they had to close because Walmart undercut their prices.)
I’m sorry you had those experiences John. maybe next time try BB Barnes and Apollo Flame?
You might drive further, but your experience likely would’ve been much better. But then, you probably knew that ten minutes into your foray.
I totally agree about Ace Hardware and Trader Joe’s. Stellar customer service!
Hendersonville Ace Hardware Manager needs to training in Customer Service. We will go to other Ace Hardware stores for our buisness.
As long as corporations have a fiduciary duty to their stockholders as decided by the Supreme Court and taught in business schools, it won’t get any better. One of the cutbacks to keep stock prices high is not offering a livable wage. Another is using AI to finally connect you to a human voice that reads from a script and has no idea how to help solve a problem. A monarchy by any other name is still a monarchy as we have here in this country. Sometimes it feels like “Let them eat cake is their mantra”. The middle-class is slowly disappearing.
exACTly!
Well said…
There are a couple of other factors that doubtless affect our ability to fill these job openings, even beyond the fact that many of them are not living wage jobs. Surely Asheville’s extraordinary cost of living has priced many would be workers out of our market (where would they live ?), and the GOP’s ongoing and vicious demonization of migrant workers isn’t exactly inviting them to come and fill these jobs either. Who do we think is going to come and flip our burgers and unlock our carts in the face of such hostile living and working conditions?
Such a sad, but true, commentary! As usual, you are spot on! Thank you!
I would add an anecdote to John’s article. Often, when the customer service is particularly bad over the phone, the entity miraculously omits to ask you to participate in a follow-up survey about the level of customer service.
I will take off from your excellent article. My brother is Hospice. He lives in Wa state. I have spent 3 mos there, moving through lack of
customer service. From there being ONLY 5 employees in total in the store at 2p at a local Lowe’s to a medical triage team asking me to repeat his name and SPELL it x3.
I had to call because of a call made to him inquiring r/t his pain
from this organization. He was encouraged to take a medication q 4
around which the MD had put totally different protocols. (Only take
the prescribed dosage from individual envelopes.) She visited him
the day before this call. I was trying to discover the individual who
made this call. After the screener asked me x2 was that a B or P, I
said why would I have said B as in boy? There is no P as in Poy in English.
Imagine my frustration to help my brother 3000 miles away. This is
another type of reduced customer service.
People on phones equipped with incomplete/inaccurate information
offered as our only solution to problems surrounding trying to get what we paid/or want to pay for.
Breakdown in communication factored in to execution of the contract which favors the seller. Not you, the customer.
The problems range from small to very large. I can walk out of a dysfunctional Lowes. I can not walk away from caring for my brother.
Customer service is not dead. We made our first time visit to Culvers’ Restaurant on Airport Road this past Sunday evening. I asked for lemon with my tea. A waiter brought me a small container of 3 lemon wedges. We talked to a waiter because we ordered onion rings but French fries appeared instead. She came back with an order of onion rings – no additional charge. We left the restaurant with half of my unfinished salad without a lid to close the salad container. A waiter came after us in the parking lot with a lid for my salad. Three examples of customer service within a half hour of our being at Culters.’
You’re spot on John. Many older folks that opted not to return to a physical office during COVID by working remotely, did not go back to the office or in person working environment. Some of us because of health concerns, some because of overbearing employers that gave no option except to work in office. No thanks after you gave my Covid three times and ruined my health forever.
Most folks working are over-worked due to a much sicker and older working population.
Glad you were able to get your cart and rocks sorted and your hamburger situation rectified.
Everyone please be kind, you never know what the other person is going through.
Interesting in that of the 4 places that John mentions the most for good customer service, there is no (except for Ace) American corporate involvement. Aldi and Trader Joe’s are German, Chick-fil-A is owned by a single family and the Ace stores are all locally owned.
But, if you want to talk about the parking situation at every Trader Joe’s that I’ve visited, Asheville is the worst of a sorry lot (pun intended).
Although, I will not defend the examples and experiences in this column, I will mention the fact that what might be currently happening in the world of “no customer service” is, in fact, Karma coming back.
For years, retail / restaurant employees have put up with rude, violent and self-entitled behavior from, well…customers.
When the pandemic became a force, those exact same employees were regarded as “essential employees” and were treated well — for about two weeks and then back to the bottom of the ladder they were returned.
Even though, many customers are not of that “evil” lot, they are simply lumped into that group and, unfortunately suffer the same consequences.
The old adage of “the customer is always right” shifted toward, “just make the customer think they are right.”
The minute that a “I want to speak to a manager” is uttered, I guarantee that you were designated a “Karen,” and no one wanted to deal with the issue.
“We have reaped, what we sow.”
My most recent customer service gripe is with the N. Asheville Wells Fargo. Our HOA has an account there and we wanted to add a new officer to our account. When I did get a human being on the phone and told him what we wanted to do, I was informed that I couldn’t just “show up”, I had to make an appointment. Ok, I said, let’s set it up! To which he responded, ” Oh no, you have to go online to make an appointment, you can’t do it on the phone”.
We are now transferring our account to a more customer friendly bank in town.
Interesting, I left Wells Fargo (HOA account) for the very same reason. Absolutely terrible customer service and extremely slow to just get waited on to make a deposit. Despite having a full staff behind the counter.
I used to teach evening English as a second language classes. Most students were healthy, young, Latin Americans. Many had construction, culinary, and mechanical skills. They were polite, sharp, avid learners who attended all classes, though working full-time jobs. They were all “illegals” who easily slipped in and out of the US when they wanted. They said it was impossible to be “legal”, so they saved their good wages in their banks back home (sending cash via Western Union) until they had saved enough to open a small business like grocery, car repair, construction, then return, raise a family and educate their children. Life in the US was filled with mean-spirited, greedy obstructionists, and they couldn’t wait to get home to live a good life. I couldn’t argue. The US is filled with people who only want to get rich by playing the lottery, and wishful thinking.
Interesting that the U.S. was good enough for them to come and work and take wages from, but saving to go back home was the ultimate goal. Doesn’t sound like they are too invested in being here. Sorry we are ” mean-spirited, greedy obstructionists” .seems we were good enough to take money from.
Can’t hire employees or bad customer service at Walmart on Airport Rd? No – Walmart just doesn’t trust their customers. I am 20 years older than John Boyle so you would think this old gray hair man would look trust worthy to use self check out right? No. The last time I used self check out at Walmart on Airport Rd, an employee came over and physically blocked me from the scanner and proceeded to scan my items (about 6 items). Maybe she thought I was going to cheat on the number of bananas I had. Very rude. I no longer shop at Walmart on Airport Rd.
Well, Walmart on Airport solved that problem by closing all self-checkouts about two weeks ago. Roped them off at each end. I had five items and stood behind two customers with full shopping carts at one of only three lanes open – True story.
RE: bad customer service, at least one article written in the last year by a national publication noted that many, if not most, companies cut back and outsourced customer-service operations during the pandemic, but have left the outsourcing and cutbacks in place permanently because it saves them so much money. The customer suffers for the bottom line.
Nailed it! I have a DOZEN examples of nightmare interactions with the ubiquitous call centers, to the point that honest to god I want to shoot myself every time I have to dial the phone. I’m currently in a battle with DoorDash going on six weeks now, because on their end they show a gift card I redeemed as giving me a $50 credit that does not show up on the website for me to spend. Best Buy cost me $800…on $988 a month in social security when I’m not working, which is often. Every time I call DoorDash, they say the problem is something else, the escalation to a tech person yielded nothing, and the escalation to a supervisor that was supposed to call me back got me nowhere as well. I’m fuming! I’m currently recovering from surgery at home and have the time and wherewithal for this scandalous turn of events, but what of the single working moms, the elderly, the disabled… I filed a complaint against Door Dash with the BBB, which got me another useless response directing me to call customer service (for the eighth time). The Attorney General is next. Does anyone else have other ideas? This has got to stop. We are being preyed upon like never before, and there is nothing we can do about it!!
The Lowe’s in Weaverville is like the WalMart you mentioned – only self checkouts available. So I’ll go to Ace Hardware instead if it’s something I can’t buy online. I hate shopping anyway, always have, and the increasing lack of customer service just means I buy more stuff at Amazon.
There is one restaurant in Asheville that impresses us with its excellent customer service every single time we eat there. Botiwalla on Haywood Road in West Asheville always has plenty of employees, they are universally friendly and helpful, even stopping by your table to ask if they can bring you anything — it’s a marvel of excellent service!
Speaking of Lowe’s, I resolved to stop shopping there –other than for items that Ace doesn’t stock–when I learned there are only two registers on the premises that aren’t self-checkout. Self-checkout is, in my opinion, the sleaziest ripoff on the planet. It puts people out of work and forces you to do the company’s work for no pay. If they gave a discount for self-checkout, that would be different. But then they would probably hike the prices to make up for it.
To be clear: Having self-checkouts has never “put people out of work,” which is the most over used reason for not using them, when available.
One or two people still have to oversee operations and if there are other employees available, they are working on other tasks (stocking, packing, cleaning, etc.).
As a used to be manager in retail and when someone would say: “I am not using self checkout because that is taking someone’s job,” to which I would promise that if six people walked in and applied to be a cashier, they would be hired on the spot.
Next time you are at the Biltmore and want a burger head to the Wayside Bar and Grill in Biltmore Village. Or any other time you want excellent food at a fair price. Locally owned and operated. We have been eating there for 14 years and have never been disappointed.
I think many younger workers in service jobs learned during the pandemic that they were expendable–laid off without pay or benefits or notice. Now that they are back at work, they are less likely to go the extra mile for employers who don’t value them. I raised my son to be reliable, so when he worked in fast food, he always got scheduled on holiday weekends. When he asked about it, he was told, “We know you’ll show up.”
We refer to the poor service we sometimes find in the better restaurants in Asheville as “Tourist Service”… it’s like they really don’t expect you to return. And when I encounter it, I don’t.
We eat at Kosta’s Kitchen, in Fletcher, almost daily. I learned the names of all the servers and hostesses, when we began eating there three years ago. We tip well. I feel that it is as much the fault of the patrons, as it is the workers, that there is little interest in good service. I watch people come from church to eat, then proceed to treat the employees as though they are less than human. In years past, you might have a personal relationship with the person serving you. Do the same now. Get to know the employees, and ask them how they are when you are there. Remember their names, be kind, empathize with their situation, tip well, and put yourself in their place. We have all become detached. Oh, and as for the owners who are getting rich off the backs of their workers, shame on you.
You didn’t even start on the tedious phone trees and endless–usually fruitless–wait times to reach a person instead of another phone tree.
But I would like to give a heap of praise for the people at the Fresh Market on Hendersonville Rd. They are knowledgeable and exceptionally customer oriented. It is a joy to be and shop there.
Phone trees, that’s a good one. I’m really not a demanding customer, but when I called my physician 25 years ago and got caught in one, I immediately found a better option. I stayed with him until he was bought out by Mission (before HCA).
John,
What’s happening at the Clock Tower site in Enka? Looks like they’re preparing the site for something big. Hmmmmm
Customer service has definitely fallen off the edge of the cliff, but there’s still some places that get it. Shout out to Publix, where I’ve never had a bad experience. Also, the folks at Galactic Pizza are always great. Same goes for Little Louie’s, Doc Brown’s BBQ, and Wicked Weed West. I’m sure there’s others.
Great article John! And you didn’t even touch on the lack of customer care service in the area of Health care! 😱
Lowe’s did a poor job when I needed a water heater. It took three weeks from the time I noticed I had no hot water until I had hot water again. Not because Lowe’s did anything. A week after I had promised time and time again and even talked to a manager, nothing had happened so I went to a competitor that uses the color orange a lot. Three days from then, a man came to my house from the company with the orange logo, though it took a week after he placed the order for the installers to show up. And based on the price in the store, installation must have cost $2500. I can’t get a straight answer from Lowe’s as to what happened or what the cost of installation would have been. Ironically, I might have saved money by going to the company I usually call for repairs, but somewhere I got the idea going to a big box store would save me money.
In the headquarters city of a certain grocery chain, the hand dryers in the restroom don’t work regardless of how many times I tell them (although other people are able to make them work). Fortunately, all other stores in the chain use a design that works. But my big complaint is that if I don’t want to self checkout I have to wait and wait and wait behind people with lots of items. polite people sometimes let me go ahead because I only buy a few items at a time from that chain.
In addition to the lack of customer service is the expectation of a tip for everything. Cashier ran up a few chocolate bars which we gathered off the shelf ourselves and the glared when we did not tip. Make a drink or food and we tip but to expect a tip for simply ringing up a purchase seems to go too far
Ditto the rant! Quite simply: I am willing to pay a higher price for a better product and better customer service.
poor management and poor training — those are the reasons.
Vote with our wallet is our recourse.
And poor parenting…let’s acknowledge that many children are not taught much at home that translates to being responsible and proactive common sense workers.
Retail customer service is a growing problem. But the biggest problem I have experienced is in health care. There is no customer concept in healthcare anymore. I was a Customer Service Manager for a mid-sized hospital and over a period of several years made huge progress on the interface of nurses/doctors and patients. Today’s interface is one way. Sit down and wait until your called, then go back and sit down and wait. No info, no concern, no service. It is terrible. The primary reasons; lack of training and lack of accountability. If there is any interaction if is usually passive aggressive. “only a little longer” with a cynical smile.
Never a “thank you” or even a “have a good day” at Ingles at HVL Rd and Mills Gap from any of the staff including management. What are they thinking???
We find a greater emphasis on customer service at locally-owned businesses, particularly those paying a living wage. These employers experience lower turnover, and that leads to better customer service without higher overall labor costs. See https://www.justeconomicswnc.org/living-wage-certification/certified-employers/.
I believe this has little to do with politics, Pandemics or “Karen’s” and everything to do with the failure of our education system; families to instill strong work ethics; and corporations to offer proper training in behavior and public relations. Our society is “dumbing down” and we should all be concerned. Thank you John Boyle for speaking out.
Well said and I agree.
Brilliant article. You may like to do another on the joys of dealing with a company on the phone – 5 minutes pushing buttons followed by having to explain your problem to a machine : “Leaking toilet” “Did you say ‘electric frypan’?” I occasionally feel sorry for the person I eventually get through to, having got past the Annoy-A-Matic answering machine, as I’m usually ready to yell at them, too.
A friend of mine was a restaurant general manager here in Asheville for yrs. He says that leadership/management is to blame for poor customer service at an establishment. If management either does not properly train employees, or are themselves disgruntled, the employees and the establishment will suffer. Publix, Maddens’ ace hardware, and Aldi are excellent examples of what happens when management is engaged and employees are properly trained. A shout out to Burger King on patton Ave by New leicester hwy. Always a happy crew who are fast, efficient, and friendly. On a personal note, I always make sure to compliment good service to management at an establishment. If you are a complainer about bad service, please point out good service also to management so they know who is a good employee.
John, you forgot to mention Verizon and Spectrum……or pack your dinner when you call Social Security or Medicare, they are a joke. It’s ok to vent isn’t it?
Great customer service at the UPS store on Hendersonville road. just a shout out!