"Warren" wrote in message
...
Doug Kanter wrote:
In supermarkets, I guess it depends on how you define "customer service".
If the person stocking shelves tells you where to find something, is that
customer service? Or, do you define it as a cut above: If you go to the
cheese department (which may or may not exist in your store), and tell
the person that in your mind, you have a recipe halfway dreamt up, can
they give you some cheese flavor advice to help you complete the recipe?

I don't go to grocery stores that have high enough prices to pay someone
with that skill set to spend 90% of their day stocking the cheese
department display, and run a slicer while waiting for that one customer
who actually has a real question to come along. Most of my grocery
shopping is done at stores that operate efficiently, and provide a
pleasant environment for me to make my buying decisions in.

If certain trends in my business continue, you will eventually find that you
will have the best of all these features in one store, including the lowest
prices. It's what customers want, and they will have it, or the stragglers
will be spanked. Winn Dixie's being punished right now for not updating
their stores. Here (Rochester NY), we have a chain called Wegman's, which
does a great job of driving its competitors up the wall. Roughly every 6
weeks, the local newspaper does a sample shopping trip at all available
stores (Wegman's, Tops, Aldi, Wal Mart, K-Mart and one or two others).
Wegman's always turns out to be the cheapest. Meanwhile, they have the best
selection, best specialty departments, cleanest stores with excellent
traffic flow, best produce, best seafood, best service. How they do it is
beyond the scope of this discussion, but it's enough to say that if you
mention them to anyone in the grocery industry, anywhere in the country, the
reaction is usually "Yeah....I wish we could do that".


There just happens to be a couple of horticultural degree holders biding
their time at the local Home Depot. They'll be out of there for a
non-retail job just as soon as they can be. Ask them a question about
plants, and you're likely to get a better answer than you will from the
gardening hobbyists or grunt labor running around the local nursery.

Well, that's no surprise. It's random. I don't expect to run into someone
with a doctorate in botany at a big-box store, or even at most garden
centers. But, it *would* be nice to find someone who loves plants. These
stores could do that, if they wanted to, and it would NOT be so difficult.
They might have to go looking for talent, but they could also be more aware
of when talent is staring them in the face.

Example (but an unusual one): Here, we have a home improvement chain called
Chase Pitkin. I was at one of their stores back in May, looking through
their outdoor plant selection. They keep most of it under a tent. The lady
running the area was all over the teenage help like cats on mice, making
sure they were doing exactly what she wanted done to the plants. "The tag
says "shade" - put it with the OTHER shade plants! In two hours, everything
on that side of the tent's gonna be roasted." With the rest of her brain,
she was dispensing good advice to three customers. Every plant on display
looked as if it had been readied for a photo shoot in a horticultural
magazine, and she was not letting the teen staff relax when it came to
continuing the manicuring, deadheading & watering.

When she was done, I told her what a pleasant surprise it was to find
someone in a store like that who actually knew her stuff. She said that the
year before, she was shopping for plants there, and noticed that the "help"
consisted of drooling teenagers. She was looking for a job, so she walked up
to the manager and TOLD him that he needed her to work there. He hired her.
She seems like the kind of lady you'd be afraid (and stupid) to fire, even
if some of the teenagers need psychological counseling after working with
her.