5 ways rude cashiers rile shoppers

Service will improve

Years ago, Roy filled a cart to the brim at a Home Depot store in San Diego. Then a clerk was rude. He abandoned the cart and spent the afternoon driving to three different hardware stores, spending 15% to 20% more. "And I felt good doing it," he says. (Proving his thesis that the problem lies with on-site management, he says, he now gets excellent service at a Home Depot in Nebraska.)

Shoppers won't stand for rudeness. At every income level, shoppers will pay extra in order to feel good about where they spend their money. The exception may be during extremely tough economic times, Fornell says.

A 2007 study by The Verde Group, a Canadian consulting firm, and the Wharton School's Jay H. Baker Retailing Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania said unhelpful sales clerks were the biggest knock to a store's reputation. (See "'Not my department' costs stores dearly.")

A mere lack of eye contact was enough to turn people away for good. And more than any other aspect of a store, clerks who ignored customers prompted the most bad-mouthing -- a dangerous blow to any company.

In the long term, it's the companies that invest in customer service that thrive. (See "Happy customers, good stocks.")

If buyers cared only about price, then Wal-Mart would have decimated Target, Texas A&M's Berry says. "Even though the perception is that Wal-Mart has lower prices, Target represents a formidable competitor because Target offers better service."

In the 2007 American Customer Satisfaction Index, which takes price into account, Target scored 77 and Wal-Mart 68 on a scale of zero to 100, with 100 being best.

"We don't change the way we feel because we're in a lower income bracket," Carbone says. "Human beings are human beings."

In the same vein, happy, pleasant, polite clerks also don't cost more.

"Of course, pay makes a difference in terms of the pool of people you can compete for, but pay isn't really the key factor here in whether you're going to have a well-mannered, well-trained, ready-to-serve staff," Berry says. "The key issue is much broader. It's about hiring the right kind of people to begin with and treating them well. Treating them like customers."

Be a good customer

In the meantime, what can shoppers do?

First, make sure the problem isn't you. Don't be a bad customer:

• Do your part. Call ahead and check that an item is in stock rather than railing at the store's staff later. Take the advertisement for that one sale item with you. In other words, know what you want. Clerks are not omniscient.

• Don't expect a clerk to be your mother. If you drop something, pick it up. If you move something, put it back. If you spill something, clean it up.

• Talk to a clerk as if she were your mother. Does this need explaining? Ask, don't demand. Smile. Be respectful.

• Get off your cell phone. Clerks may not need you to scan and bag items, but they might have a question and do require prompt payment. Plus, it's just rude.

• Play by the rules. Don't use the express lane if you don't have an express load. Don't ask clerks to change a price for you, to accept expired coupons or to give you freebies. For more, see this post at everything2.com.

• Act your age. Don't open seals without asking. Don't throw a tantrum when a clerk isn't authorized to give a rebate or can't pull an out-of-stock item out of his armpit. Try reading an item's manual at home before returning to yell at a low-wage worker.

• Be friendly. Tell the clerks something upbeat. Let a manager know that the nice clerks are why you shop there. Mood is contagious, and positive reinforcement works.

And if smiles and respect don't do the trick:

• Complain to management only if it's one clerk. "If it's a common occurrence, going to the manager won't solve it," Roy says. "If he doesn't have it solved yet, he or she should not be there."

• Contact competitors. Let them know how much you'd like some competition, and good service, in your neighborhood.

• Talk with your feet. "I don't think there's a better way to deliver a message than to not buy at a store where you're not treated well," Roy says.

• Let headquarters know. If you care enough and think the corporate office does, too, write a letter to the CEO to say that service matters and you're defecting. Many do listen.

Published Sept. 10, 2008

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