February and the Customer Service Manual

February

It has to be said I cant remember much of February, I have worked two Saturdays out of the last three weeks, my full time day job, two evenings and for the last week I have had a really rotten cold. It amazed me quite how much snot a human can produce, at its peak I could have been selling two pints of snot a day.

Anyway I can now feel myself returning to normal and hopefully march should not be so bad.

The Customer Service Manual

I was in homebase shopping for light bulbs in my ongoing campaign to replace all the light bulbs in my house for energy efficient bulbs. The campaign is going well, all normal bulbs have been replaced and at homebase I secured replacements for the candle bulbs in my art deco lamp which just leaves some GU10 halogens and some R50 spots to be replaced. All can be replaced its just a question of finding a shop that sells the right bulbs.

Hence my trip to homebase which I have to say if you want a 60W replacement bulb which is a standard energy efficient stick then they have enough to refurbish Buckingham Palace. Everywhere you turned there seemed to be a bottomless 1 m square bucket. If that is repeated in every homebase in the UK then homebase must have billions of them, which given they last ten years is a bit pointless. Have I uncovered the great European Lightbulb mountain, are they unable to turn off the machine that makes them and every shop in the UK is having to hide them instore to avoid a national calamity?

If you want any other kind of bulb they had a few bits and pieces but no GU10 replacements or R50 replacements. Eventually I gave up and headed to the till with two candle bulbs, a plant and a pair of oven gloves.

The Checkout assistant had obviously been on the mandatory customer service course and was well briefed on the Customer Service Manual. The Conversation went as follows:

Checkout: Did you find everything you needed today?
Me: No, I was looking for some lightbulbs but your selection is a bit rubbish at the moment.
Checkout: Yes our selection is a bit rubbish at the moment.

Great, so the trick is to agree with the customer. The manual probably states sympathise or affirm the customer's comment to give them validation.

Although in this case they actually achieved less than nothing. Good Customer Service might have been to ask me what I had been looking for and would I like them to order some for me, or hold some when the next order came in. No, they let a slightly peeved customer walk off into the sunset. I will pop back there another time to see if they have the light bulbs back in stock but chances are they wont and so I will just have to order them off the internet.

If you are trying to improve customer service a half hearted by the book attempt is worse than nothing at all.