Are Your Employees Interested in Helping People?

We have all heard it before – when something goes wrong, being defensive or unhelpful will impact both you and your business. You will never see that customer again, nor their family, nor their friends. If someone has a lousy experience due to your indifference, they will tell people about their poor experience.

Sound obvious? Then why do we continue to witness employees’ indifference to our concerns, complaints and our requests?

Yesterday, we benchmarked Indigo. For those of you who are not familiar with this brand, it is the largest book retailer in Canada operating bookstores in all 10 provinces under the names, Indigo, Chapters, World's Biggest Bookstore, and Coles.

Unfortunately, our experience yesterday was sub-par. We went in the store to buy a series of business books and approached one of their sales staff to help us locate a new title. The individual was on the telephone and then yelled across to her colleague that a difficult customer was on the line and could he help deal with the situation. She complained quite vocally about the customer and what she deemed to be an unreasonable request. So why did this exchange bother me? Companies need to remember that:

They are in the business of serving the needs and the requests of their customers – no matter how trivial, mundane or unreasonable.

Employees should never complain vocally about customers when other customers are in the premises. It is just simply unprofessional.

Complaining about a customer made us feel uneasy about asking our question. Would we get the same response? As it turned out the individual did not smile at us and simply pointed to the location where we could find our book – certainly not what I would expect from an engaged employee.

Employees need to remember that they are there to help people. Period. Full stop.

As well left Indigo, we wondered whether or not the employees were truly engaged and committed to serving their customers or whether or not they were just cashing in a pay check. This was certainly not a best in class experience!

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