Poor Customer Service Costs Businesses Sales

Poor customers service costs businesses sales. I observed this first hand yesterday.

I was in the supermarket yesterday and I observed a man who was wanted to buy mussels (seafood). These mussels were packaged in bushels. As you can imagine, there were long lines in the supermarket. There were scales to weigh food items both at the Deli counter/Meat Department and at the checkout lines. After a long wait on the checkout line, the cashier was ringing up the items. When it came time to charge the customer for the mussels the cashier said, ” the mussels have to be weighted and priced by the Meat Department”. Mind you there was a scale right at the cash register!

As a result, the customer stormed out of the store in frustration leaving a large order behind. Clearly, the store should have done one of two things:

1 Have the deli counter personnel package and weigh all of the so the cashier could check customers out.

2 Train the cashier to weigh and price the mussels.

Also, the cashier should have had the store manager help this customer in this case.

Clearly the store should train it’s people better and have policies in place to prevent this from happening again. The store lost a lot of business from this order. It may seem small, but what if this would happen on a regular basis?

Lapses  in customer service add up to damage to brand reputations, lost customers and lost profits.

How is poor customer service impacting your business?