My shopping experience started out great on that Labor Day weekend. I was headed to the mall with my best friend to check out all of the sales that were going on. It doesn’t get much better than that, but it can definitely get worse, and it did.
First we went into The Gap store. It was bustling with a lot of customers but very few sales people. My friend and I went our separate ways in the store. I found a bunch of clothes to try, weeded out what I didn’t want, then headed to the register to pay.
My friend had already checked out and told me that it took forever, due to the fact that there was a long line of people at each register.
She went to a different register and encountered the same problem. I glanced around at the three registers in the store and determined that the lines had about the same amount of people waiting.
So I went to the nearest one and waited, and waited, and waited. Due to the fact that they had sales going for the holiday weekend, plus discount coupons that had been mailed out, it took forever to get through the line. I noticed there were three salespeople on the floor walking around tidying up.
Each counter had two registers and I wondered why they were not helping people check out. I’ve been in businesses where each sales associate has an iPod on their waistband and can check out a customer anywhere in the store.
I was flabbergasted as to why such a big chain store did not have this service. If the prices weren’t so good and I didn’t want the clothes so badly, I would have left.
It also would have saved tons of time when I was in the dressing room waiting for the sales associate to find another size for me. After what seemed like forever, (after all, what is there to do in a dressing room alone?), she came back to inform me that they didn’t have the size I wanted. Another ten minutes wasted.
My patience was wearing thin, but we decided to go to a shoe store that we saw on the way here because we both needed shoes. This would turn out to be our second mistake.
Steve Madden has some very cute, but some-what expensive shoes. This store was even busier than The Gap, full of women ready to spend a lot of money on a lot of shoes. After finding a gorgeous platform-shoe, I approached the salesperson and asked if they had it in my size and the color that I wanted.
She told me she would have to go check, but she couldn’t leave the front until another salesperson came out from the back. So began my long odyssey of waiting. After about ten minutes she was tired of waiting herself and went to check.
She actually brought out what I asked for but it was a little too big so I asked if they had it in a half size smaller? Again, I waited until it was her “turn” to go into the back room of the store because they were under staffed.
Another ten minutes goes by. Miraculously she had the shoe I wanted, in the size that fit and the color I wanted. I made the mistake of feeling better about this shopping experience before I saw another shoe style that I liked. Big mistake.
We had already been in the store at least a half an hour, waiting for twenty of those minutes, now I had to ask myself, ‘was it worth my time to wait AGAIN?’
All I can say is that cute shoes can drive a woman to irrational behavior! I approached another salesperson. The salesperson that helped me originally had apparently fallen into the abyss that was their back room.
I apologized to my friend for the long wait; of course she said it was fine. I asked for what I wanted, and then promptly sat down for what I knew would be another wait.
This time it took fifteen minutes to find out they didn’t have my size or the color I wanted.
You would think this would have deterred me from asking the next question, but it didn’t. I had to know if they had it at another store? The salesperson had to use the only phone in the store to call another store to find out, but the manager was on the only phone trying to get a voice authorization for a credit card.
Another salesperson was attempting to process a return, I say attempting because she was not having much success. So AGAIN, I waited. We were at a complete standstill and I was thinking about leaving at that point.
Then I became angry at the fact that I just spent a lot of money for crappy service and here I was waiting to GIVE them more of my money. Then I decided to return the shoes I had just bought, but I couldn’t do that either because the only register the store had was being used.
I’ve gone through security screening to board a plane in less time than this was taking! My friend assured me that this was o.k. with her and she said just to relax and wait. I waited, but I was not relaxed.
The next fifteen minutes played out like a very, very bad comedy. The girl on the register needed to use the phone, the manager, who was on the phone, needed to use the register. I think you can get the picture, as I’m sure we have all experienced the same episode of errors.
All I could think about was how easy, quick and efficient this whole shopping experience would have been if these stores had mobile pos systems.
I gleaned from this that if I have a choice between two stores to go shopping in, I will definitely go to the store with the mobile pos system.
This experience really hit home with me by emphasizing the fact that customer service is extremely important in this economy and stores that offer better customer service and a better customer experience will be the stores to survive.
Tracy Brent-Berry Mobile Solutions V.P. ABC Mobile Pay – tracy@abcprocessing.net - 661-259-2185 – http://www.abcmobilepay.com
No comments:
Post a Comment