Is Lack Of Training Costing You Customers?
There are avoidable situations that can leave you with angry and/or lost customers, frustrated employees, reduced sales, and an undeserved bad reputation. Often this may be something as simple as poor communication, lack of a proper or formal training program, or assignment of tasks to a user who is not authorized to perform them.
Here’s a recent example:
While trying to work with a POS clerk over the phone on a specific usage issue, the conversation was interrupted by an angry customer who had just come back into the store. He had been overcharged for an item. The clerk set the phone down abruptly – I could hear the entire room conversation, no one could hear me. To resolve the customer complaint, rather than just voiding the first ticket and re-ringing the ticket, or returning just the one item at issue, the clerk took the customers credit card and then rang another charge through the register. This made things worse.
When the customer figured out what had been done, a shouting match started between the customer and the clerk. The customer was insisting on getting a cash refund for the overage charges. As the argument intensified, it brought in several more staff people and customers. A large shouting match progressed with the entire group fighting over control of the receipt,credit card, and product. This was accompanied by cursing and screams of "don’t put your hands on me" and "stop touching me!".
This chaos went on for about 15 minutes, it ended with the customer storming off, before the clerk finally picked up the phone again. The caller then handed me off to another more experienced clerk. When I explained what had just happened, and how the first clerk could have handled the situation, I heard a huge sigh, and a reply, "he hasn’t had much training"
In this particular case the original clerk had not been trained to handle returns. His user account was not authorized to void tickets or take returns. A managers assistance would have been required to help this customer properly.
In the Internet age, having an angry ex-customer can be devastating for your business, especially because an angry customer is most likely to be your most vocal critic. The last thing that your business needs are negative reviews being posted on your site, or on various commonly used Internet review sites like YELP, for something that can easily have been avoided. This can drive potential business away from you.
If you would like some assistance with staff training, please contact the CCS Retail Systems, Support Department. We have a full suite of classes for all levels in your organization.