Customer Service Story.
Value Shop, Week 1.(Lyra)
Summary
There was a group of foreigners from Mongolia that visited our shop this week. Even though we did not understand them one little bit, and they, us, we tried our best to serve with a smile, as that’s what’s most important. It was Zerene, Sandhya, and I tending the shop and we were pretty panicky as it was the first time we had foreigners entering the shop by ourselves. We tried our best to tend to the customers’ needs and wants but I dare say it was difficult. At the end of it, even though I do not speak their language, I knew that they left the shop happy, due to the huge smiles on all their faces.
Solution to Issue
Although there was a language barrier, we served these foreigners wholeheartedly and brought them around the store using mostly hand signals and very simple English. It was tougher due to the fact that it was only Week 1, our first week alone, and there was no one there to help us with translation. But, we’ve realized, the best way to go around being lost in translation in the service industry, is with a smile.
Learning Point
1. Treating customers well, even though you have no idea what they’re saying is very important.
2. Even in retail outlets like our MSC, good customer service is a very crucial tool for all students to attend to the customers.
3. We must be vigilant and serve all customers as quickly and as promptly as possible with effectiveness and efficiency.
Value Shop, Week 2. (Nathaniel)
A couple of days ago during Week 2, we had a new team mate here in Value Shop, Jocelyn. Being new, she had to learn everything from scratch from us with our little knowledge, as we were also pretty new. We taught the best we could for the first few days. On Wednesday, during the afternoon shift, EMRS returned our unsold stock back to us. Just so happens that they had a few errors with their sales which resulted in us not being able to tally our stock. To dissolve this error, my other two more experienced team mates, Sandhya and Lyra, had to go see our supervisor. This meant that Jocelyn was left alone to tend the shop. At around 2 there were quite a few customers in the shop and being new, Jocelyn had a little difficulty attending to each of them. She called be back down and I returned to help her out until the rest of her shift mates returned.
Solution to Issue
This problem could have been avoided if for one, EMRS did not err with their sales of our products. But, since that is out of our control, we’ve found that we needed to have more experienced staff around to help those that were still learning. Also, there would not have been this problem if we had managed our staff tending to the store better.
Learning Points
1. We’ve learnt that it is important to manage staff tending to our shop so as to help service the customers to our fullest potential.
2. It is important to teach new staff much faster so they can handle the shop by themselves and be up to standard with the rest of the team.
3. This whole TEP is a crucial learning experience for us and it is up to us to attain as much knowledge of our products and get the hang of customer service, especially since we only have 9 weeks to make it or break it.
