Queuing

Queuing is mere conformity; you cannot have legal proceedings brought against you for not queuing. But everyone does it and lots of people complain about the length of queues and the amount of time it takes to get served in whichever shop you’re in. It is an aspect of shopping that has been instilled in society and cannot be removed, you will find a miniscule proportion of society willing to be non-conformist and ignore this basic courtesy.

The irritation with supermarkets is that they have, let’s say, 15 checkouts that can be manned by employees and at least another six that are now self-service (god-forbid we are not given the option of avoiding all human contact) but not all of the checkouts are open all the time. This means that those that are open have queues of people at them and yet the supermarkets refuse to open more tills. This has a negative effect on the customers because they become frustrated with the wait and their opinion of the supermarket drops.

The creation of self-service checkouts have, in theory, lead to decreased time spent in supermarkets. They have replaced those tills that used to cause great aggravation for those aware of correct grammar usage and have signs that said “10 items or less” but they have become so popular with those that are just popping into supermarkets for one or two items that often they have longer queues than normal checkouts and so customers will opt to spend more time waiting in a queue in order to avoid speaking with another human. This is contradictory to the earlier sentiment that people are irritated by the prospect of queuing but is no less true; priorities have shifted.

Additionally, self-service checkouts have proven to cause more problems for shoppers as their over-sensitivity and generic phrases frustrate customers and leave them standing next to their items with a red light flashing above their head waiting for the assistant to finish with the previous customer (who had the same problem) and swipe their card to instruct the machine to behave. Hearing ‘unidentified item in the bagging area’ ten times in a twelve item shop is enough to put anyone off using the self-service checkouts, and yet, the queues continue to be excessively long.

For more information on the customer service offered in supermarkets such as Asda, contact their head office customer services department and speak with one of their friendly and helpful employees.

Customer Service in Supermarkets

We all get into routines in every aspect of life and supermarket shopping is just one example. Supermarkets are all set out in similar ways but not identical so whichever one you frequent means you get used to picking up the same products week on week, in the same order. This has several implications firstly it can be irritating if and when the supermarket moves items around but this routine also sinks everyone into such a level of ordinary that when customers receive poor customer service or something changes it can have quite an impact upon the customer; leading them to change the supermarket they frequent.

Therefore, supermarkets need to maintain exceptional levels of customer service. This incorporates a huge number of departments these days as supermarkets have developed into more than food suppliers. It is now possible to buy every household item necessary – from entertainment products such as CDs, DVDs and books to garden furniture, children’s games, pharmaceuticals and clothing, the list is almost endless. But this means that the customer service offered needs to be, at least slightly, tailored to each department. Clothing departments for example need to offer male and female assistance so that advice can be given to customers of their respective genders without causing offence or discomfort. Each department will have individual needs that are not always immediately obvious, these need to be found and accommodated if the supermarket intends to retain customers.

In addition to this often supermarkets have crèches and cafes incorporated into them and the customer service in these need to be even higher still. If customers choose to leave their child in the crèche while they shop they expect to have the same child returned to them in the same state that they left them. Supermarket customers are fickle; largely because they are allowed to be. The choice on the market is vast and therefore if one supermarket does not deliver high quality customers can find another supermarket willing to offer a better quality of service with five miles of them.

Returning to the earlier point about the routines that are established when shopping, this means that if the level of service is not maintained by the management in the supermarket customers can get very upset. All employees of the supermarket are required to have a certain level of customer service regardless of the department they work in and if they are rude to a customer it can impact upon the whole company.

Although supermarkets are vital to society this does not given them a free reign to treat customers poorly, if anything it reinforces the need to treat them well because there is always another supermarket willing to take the custom.

For more information regarding customer service offered in supermarkets visit our Home Page or contact the Asda Helpline.