Poor customer service in SVG

Tue Jan 14, 2013

Editor: Many businesses in this country lack professionalism and good customer/sales relationship. If many of these businesses were in a different country where it is more competitive, they would soon go out of business. However, it seems that in this country, there is no need for good sales persons with good customer relationships. For naturally, many businesses are doing well, despite their poor, unprofessional approach to customers.{{more}}

A case in point is at a certain store owned by one of the Syrians. A customer walked into the store desiring to purchase a house phone. In the showcase are four different kinds of house phones. The customer requested to have a look at two of the house phones and, would you believe it, the customer was denied that request. The customer was told that they cannot take it out of the showcase and that the customer can see it from the showcase.

The customer then complained to the lady owner of the store who gave no satisfaction and was told that the workers know how to deal with customers. She could not care less about the customer. Maybe they had made thousands of dollars and so they did not care about that one customer.

Fortunately, the gentleman who is also the owner of the store and husband of the lady then, in a nice way, went to the customer, assisted the customer and explained the features of the phone. Of course, the customer could have walked out of the store, but instead still purchased the item.

To add insult to injury, while the customer was being helped by the gentleman, the other workers were laughing and making a mockery of the customer. Would you believe it, the lady of the store could not care less how the workers behaved and never sought to rebuke them. After all, it seemed in that store that customers are not right.

I am certain that if you are a regular shopper in Kingstown you would discover that many workers are not friendly, helpful and could not care less about the customers. I would think that every worker would desire to see every person who walked into a store purchase an item. If you look at many stores that do well, you will see that their workers are friendly, willing to help and would go the extra mile to satisfy the customers.

Maybe it is time that businesses step up in their approach to sales. Also maybe it is time that customers demand better service from stores. For, if as customers they demand better and are given stiffer competition, then I am certain more businesses would improve.

It is time for many of these workers in stores to be given training and also for more businesses to become competitive. Thank you. Let us raise our bar in service to customers this year, 2014.

I wish everyone a prosperous and successful 2014.

Kennard King