You can be pretty certain that when Jo Clarke went to buy some groceries at her local Sainsbury’s store last week, she did not expect to see her face on the pages of every national newspaper the following day! When a checkout assistant refused to serve her because she was deep in conversation on her phone, Jo decided to take action and complain. The result – an apology from Sainsbury’s and the creation of a huge nationwide debate about customer service and manners. Here are links to a sample of 3 of the articles in the media:
BBC News – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23158579
It is such a compelling debate, that I have decided to get in on the act. Who is in the right, and who is in the wrong? Are they both right? Are they both wrong? The story made me think of the old adage ‘the customer is always right’……..a statement that can spark a new debate all of its own! So let’s explore the questions – was the customer ‘right’ in this situation?
Every day, organisations all over the world interact with customers. Customers come in all shapes and sizes. Some customers are very nice, some customers are not. Some customers like to have a conversation, some like to avoid human interaction altogether. Some customers now transact with companies without ever seeing, speaking or touching another human being!! Welcome to the world as we know it in 2013. It is a world of ease and convenience, where consumers are able to do whatever they want, wherever they want to.
The sight of a customer walking and talking and eating and drinking whilst doing something on their smart phone or tablet is not unusual in society today. It is not uncommon to see people talking in to a phone whilst tapping away at their tablet simultaneously. Whether it be for work, or for pleasure, our ability and desire to stay connected much of the time has become a fact of life. Hands up if you go to bed with your smartphone sitting within 1 foot of your pillow?
What I am trying to say is that Jo Clarke will not have been the first customer to roll up at a checkout in a supermarket with a phone glued to her ear. Jo Clarke is unlikely to be the last – despite the publicity her experience has generated. As technology has evolved over the last twenty years, social etiquette has unfortunately evolved at a very different rate. What people perceive to be acceptable today, they would not have perceived to be so twenty years ago.
What Jo Clarke did last week is , in my opinion, rude. What she did though is not technically wrong – there is no policy or law that prevents a customer of Sainsbury’s (or any other retailer as far as I am aware) from conducting a transaction at a checkout whilst at the same time participating in a telephone conversation. There is no policy or law that would have prevented her from having a face to face conversation with another customer or friend at the same time either. However, just because there is no law against it, does not make it socially acceptable to do it.
The environment we live in today still contains people – you or I. It is bizarre to think that there are more of us in the world now than there were before these techy whizzy smart phone devices were invented. Yet despite their being more people, we interact in person less and less. That may explain why manners for many have gone out of the window. However, where we do interact with people ‘face to face’, there is no reason why we should pay them any less respect than we would have done a hundred years ago.
I feel I am well placed to talk about this subject. Last year, I spent three glorious weeks experiencing life at the beginning of the twentieth century in the BBC programme, Turn Back Time: the Family. Living for a week as an Edwardian middle class local council clerk allowed me to see how important manners, etiquette and social behaviour was. There is no doubt that the overly strict social heirs and graces in Edwardian England were a little rigorous, however as we fast forward over a hundred years to 2013, we may have gone a little far in the other direction.
Me as a Middle Class Edwardian council clerk and my very well mannered wife and family!
The debate on manners is one thing. The reaction of the Sainsbury’s checkout assistant is another. Reports in the media have seen many spring to her defence. Driven by the manners principle, it is argued that she was quite right to refuse to attend to someone who was actively disengaged in the transaction. Whilst I will repeat that I am not disagreeing with the manners principle, I do find myself on the side of the fence that says the checkout assistant was in the wrong to refuse to serve Jo Clarke.
I believe that all employees should be empowered to do what is right for the customer. I believe that employees should be actively encouraged to do what it takes to make an experience positively memorable for customers. Only last week I was fortunate to judge the customer service training awards in London. Haven holidays told a great story of a guest who visited a Haven Park recently. The guest realised on arrival that they had forgotten to bring a travel cot for their baby. Haven did not have any spare. The receptionist took it upon herself to call her husband – asking him to bring their own travel cot so they could lend it to the guest for the week. That is what I call positive empowerment! I also believe that employees should not under any circumstances be subjected to inappropriate behaviour from a customer. Abusive, aggressive customers are not the kind of customers a business needs. It is on the rare occasion that a customer behaves inappropriately that I would agree that the customer is definitely NOT right.
I do not believe that there is a sufficient argument to suggest that Jo Clarke was inappropriate. Although rude (in my opinion), she was neither abusive or aggressive. Her behaviour did not prevent the checkout assistant from doing her job. The checkout assistant also had no idea what the purpose of the call was. Jo Clarke could have been on the phone talking to the hospital about a sick relative. She could have been answering an important call from work, or listening to a message from school about an injury to her child. I do not believe it is within the rights of an employee to take it upon themselves to ‘discipline’ a customer when the customer has technically not done anything wrong in the eyes of the company.
The fact that Sainsbury’s decided to apologise suggests that they agree. It would be a brave retailer that would make a decision to ban the use of mobile phones from the checkout of their stores. There is nothing to stop retailers or other organisations suggesting that the use of mobile phones at the checkout should be avoided, but they are unlikely to actively stop it.
Like any debate, it is difficult to reach a conclusive result. There are as many people agreeing with Jo Clarke as there are with the checkout assistant. A discussion with the lovely Mrs Golding last week about this story resulted in a full blown argument. Naomi is in complete agreement with the checkout assistant. It is understandable as Naomi spent a year working for one of the big supermarkets. She has experienced first hand what it feels like to serve a customer who just expects you to get on with it whilst they merrily chat away on the phone. Naomi said it is extremely dispiriting and de-motivating. Naomi says it almost makes you feel like a worthless piece of furniture. This does help to understand the frustration of being on the other side of the till, and why the checkout assistant took the action she did.
I still feel that it is for the company to make a decision as to what is acceptable and what is not. It is then the responsibility of the company to invest in training their staff on how to best deal with situations like this. I am pleased that Sainsbury’s apologised. I am also pleased that they are not taking any disciplinary action against the member of staff. Jo Clarke has suggested she will not shop in this Sainsbury’s again. Is that because she is mortally wounded by the experience, or because she is afraid of the disapproving looks she may get from other shoppers? Hopefully the experience has served as a reminder to her and others of basic manners. If so great. However, we should sadly resign ourselves to living in a world where social etiquette continues to ebb away at the same pace as technology continues to evolve.
What side of the fence do you sit on? I would love to know.
One thing I have noticed is that young people who have grown up with mobile phones seem to have a Pavlovian reaction to answer, and when these people are working in a customer service environment it doesn’t work. In a local pub on Saturday night there were two incidents highlighting this firstly a barmaid broke off mid round to answer the pub phone as soon as it rang, and later in the evening the other barmaid served me while using here mobile. I’m beginning to think I’ll sit at a table and phone my order in.
I think I reluctantly agree with you. While the customer was being bloody rude, it’s not for checkout operators to seek to dictate customer behaviour. You can imagine it being the beginning of something of a slippery slope – eating food, chewing gum, wearing an offensive T-shirt etc.
On the other hand, in an independently-run pub the licensee is quite entitled to take the view “my gaff, my rules”.
This is a great debate, one that we were just discussing last week as part of our weekly “Customer Experience Moment” exercise.
I would go as far to say that Jo Clarke got it spectacularly wrong. I would even question the way Sainsbury’s train their front line staff on customer service. There is this perception that in order to deliver a great experience, and even create delight, we need to engage with the customer. What a load of rubbish.
Today’s consumer is much more sophisticated & transactional today than they were 10 years ago. What I mean by this is that many companies we now transact with, we simply want it to be as EASY and pain-free as possible. That in itself, for many of us, is the delighter!
Personally, I like to engage with the checkout assistant and it most certainly contributes to my overall shopping experience. But for many others, that level of engagement is not their priority. The question I have is whether Sainbury’s are training their staff to identify a non-engager type? Did Jo ever consider that it could have been her swift scanning of the goods and even go as far as packing the items for the customer that could have created the delight? In other words, her actions in speeding up the checkout process and not her words (in this particulary case), would have given the customer a reason to keep coming back.
The best part, is that you don’t necessarily have to remove the emotion from the customer experience either. If I was training their staff, I would workshop how we could still drive our values, i.e. friendly service, in other ways when dealing with a customer on their mobile phone. In this case, Jo could have simply written on the receipt “Have a great day! Jo”. That way, she used the most appropriate way of playing out a key value while still fulfilling that customer’s immediate need – just getting on with it!
Jo Clarke was the customer, not the checkout operator, btw.
Personally I really don’t like it if the person on the checkout makes any specific comments regarding my purchases, as opposed to general conversation. This was satirised a few years ago on “The Fast Show”.
There are so many issues this story covers………and having attempted to cover them all in the numerous attempts I have already made at a response, I have decided to cover just one.
Expectations! what do we as customers expect from the providers we choose, do our expectations change depending on our mood, environment and circumstance. And if so, how on earth do our suppliers know what we want, if we don’t communicate.
The checkout girl has no idea how long Ms Clark will be on the phone, she does not know if she requires a supply of plastic bags, or has her own, does she want a hand to pack or will she manage, with her one free hand. We don’t know the answer to any of these questions, so how can the shop assistant be expected to fulfill the customers needs, simply she can’t.
In order to ensure her customer gets the service EXPECTED she needs to ascertain her requirements, she cannot do this if Ms Clark is ignoring her….
Is Ms Clarke rude?, yes, in my opinion.
Was the checkout girl right to wait?, yes, in my opinion
Could the message have been delivered in a better way?, yes, in my opinion.
My advice to Ms Clarke would be that if she is in a rush and does not want to engage, use the self serve!!
Ian – I’m pretty passionate about the customer experience, I think it is a deeply human concept.
Great customer experiences come from great relationships – which makes it a two-way thing. In many ways, we get the customer service we are prepared to invest in.
I think Jo Clark got the service that her level of engagement deserved. She clearly was not invested in it that relationship – perhaps she didn’t even realise it was a relationship.
A part of me would love for Sainsburys’ to stand up for this relationship – to recognise it takes two to tango.
Small things like making eye contact, offering a smile, saying ‘Hello’ and talking to the other person by name go a long way in giving and getting awesome customer services.
Ian, thank you for such a great article on this incident and you’re absolutely right that Jo Clark is not the first nor, sadly, the last.
In the end we all would get better experiences if we realised that Customer Service is not servitude.
Good to see some interesting responses on this Ian. Rather ironically, I didn’t see this story as being a social comment on what is deemed as acceptable or unacceptable behaviour, but rather an indication of the fact that our relationship with technology and the speed of change means that we are all struggling to balance manners, relationships and tasks and the lines are becoming increasingly blurred. Let me give you some more examples – emailing at the dinner table, updating your facebook page on the beach, tweeting from a rugby match, texting in church (I’m not a frequent church goer but did see this at Christmas), using your mobile in the bath. They are all activities that, in the past, we invariably did whilst focused on the main event (eating, relaxing, watching sport, worshipping, bathing) but which technology has now allowed us to multi task. That’s right, we can do even more things in the same amount of time. One of the problems with this is that some people try to do so many things that they sometimes forget that they still live in a world physically occupied by other humans. You can see these people everywhere – walking up the street staring down at their smartphones, talking into car bluetooths whilst parking, texting into mobiles at children’s parties – if we’re honest I think you’ll find we’re all guilty of it to some extent. And that’s why Jo Clarke shouldn’t be made the scapegoat in this story. It’s a wider issue that everyone is involved in and it makes me laugh that people are taking ‘sides’. The bottom line is that we are all trying to learn to live with the demands that technology brings (Tomorrows World said it would be the other way around so something’s gone drastically wrong) and frequently getting it wrong. Like any dispute, I do hope that Jo Clarke and the checkout assistant spoke after the event and apologised to each other for any upset caused. But is that wishful thinking?
She is ridiculously bad manner woman thats all. Or probably agent for the rivals of sainsburys for few pounds. This is not acceptable as a customer if i have any important thing to talk i would rather finish it before going to the till. Do not forget the person behind the counter is a human a norman human being not a slave . So this lady is just not acceptable .