4 Retail Customer Service Mistakes

These common store mistakes offer good lessons for providing better service.

Retail isn’t an easy job, and customer service mistakes happen frequently. The good news: store owners can learn from these mistakes and use them as lessons for providing excellent retail service.

We’re all shoppers, so most of us have seen our fair share of these service mistakes, along with their opposites: retail employees who went above and beyond to be cheerful, professional and helpful. Chances are good we returned to those stores happily, buoyed by good memories of the service we received.

Here are four retail service mistakes along with lessons that can be learned from these service snafus:

Letting a long line grow

Here’s a tale of two stores around the holidays. Recently, I was in a pet store that had one register open and a line that had grown nearly to the back of the store, with cranky customers hoisting heavy bags of dog food and clutching chihuahua-sized ugly Christmas sweaters. The employee at the register didn’t call for help or seem to notice the growing line, so I put my merchandise back and left. I was in a wine store that had the same issue, with hordes of revelers picking up last-minute bottles for their holiday celebrations. However, this store had multiple registers open and a few roving employees with tablets offering to serve those paying with cards. As a result, the longest line I had ever seen also moved the fastest.

Service lesson: Use technology to anticipate staffing needs, speed up checkout and help even long lines move swiftly.

Ignoring customers to take a phone call

This has happened to me many times in many types of retail businesses: I get in my car and drive to a store, wait in a long line to ask a question and, just as I think it’s finally my turn, get ignored in favor of a customer who called the store. Instead of asking the caller to hold, a retail employee often will deal with the caller’s issue before getting to the next customer in line. It’s frustrating, to say the least, when you took the time and effort to go to the store.

Service lesson: Create a system for dealing with phone calls without ignoring the customers who are standing right in front of you in the store. Train your employees that, when in doubt, they should prioritize the in-person customer.

Complaining about your job

I remember watching as things got worse and worse at a local dollar store. I gauged the state of affairs by listening to employees complain about their jobs as they were ringing up my toothpaste, chocolate or dishwasher tabs. Usually they’d be venting to each other about the terrible management, awful hours and poor pay. I knew things had gotten really bad when a regular employee was on the phone with a friend or relative, badmouthing her boss loudly, not even looking up as she scanned each customer’s items. I avoided going in for as long as possible, and the next time I checked out she was no longer there.

Service lesson: Remember that happy employees lead to happy customers. Devote yourself to creating a satisfied workforce, and your customers won’t hear employees griping about their jobs.

Pretending not to see a confused customer

Retail employees have a lot of tasks to deal with, from sweeping floors to stocking shelves to organizing messes left by customers rooting through merchandise. It’s easy to get so fixated on completing these tasks that you end up ignoring a confused customer and passing up a golden opportunity to provide great service. This happened to me recently at a large hardware store, and I finally had to corner an employee who was stocking shelves to apologetically ask for help. I felt bad, as she led me toward the saw horses, because I worried she’d be penalized for getting behind on her tasks.

Service lesson: As an owner or manager, institute a “customer first” policy, meaning that employees will get praised and rewarded for putting aside a physical task to cheerfully help a customer.

Retail customer service is no easy job, but it comes down to the basics: a good attitude, a willingness to help and a well-functioning workplace led by a service-focused owner or manager.