Attentive Employees - The Art of Handling the Customer Waiting in Line
Good businesses will train their employees on how to handle a customer at the register; great companies will train their employees on how to be attentive to customers not yet at the register and waiting on line.
Let me first give you a few examples of inattentive, and therefor shabbily trained, employees.
I was at a McDonald's® Restaurant in Jersey City the other day waiting behind a customer who was paying in cash (I do not believe in paying with cash for anything) and the cashier, let me call her Mable, had to give a penny back in change but ran out of pennies. She then tried to crack open a roll of pennies and it was one of those really tight, double-wrapped rolls that one has to completely destroy in order to get every penny out. After breaking the roll in half, only two or three pennies landed in the coin slot, but instead of giving the customer one of those pennies and putting the roll into the till until she could get to it later when it wasn't so busy, she hacked at the roll for another two minutes, peeling away the paper layers like a retarded monkey until she got out every single coin in the roll, all the while completely oblivious to the waiting customers on the line, and more importantly, unattentive to me.
I kept myself busy answering emails and texting business instructions on my Samsung Galaxy S III® otherwise I wouldn't have been so docile. Under normal conditions I am the kind of guy to say, while pointing to her customer, "Excuse me Mable, give her one of those pennies that you have there and let her go on her way; then take my order and when you have time later, you can get to the rest of those pennies." But she would of done that herself, if she were an attentive employee.
Another time, at another restaurant, I ordered coffee, and at this particular McDonald's®, the cashier only takes orders and someone else fills them. So I'm waiting about two minutes watching the person who's supposed to be pouring my coffee but instead is busying herself with things that could be done in between other tasks. I did say, this time, "Could you please get my coffee and do whatever you're doing later."
Acknowledge that You Know the Customer is Waiting
Yes, I've been on the other side of the counter and I know that sometimes you need to refill cups, batch up a new pot of coffee, clean the counter of debris, and so on. But if it's one of those days when there are no slow breaks and you just have to finish some task, then at least tell the customer, "I'll have your coffee in a jiff, a new pot is brewing and I'm refilling the cup holders until the coffee is ready." In this manner, I'm not standing there, pulling my pud, wondering if the server even knows I'm waiting for my coffee.Now here is an example of an attentive employee, and from the U.S. Post Office no less: I had to drop off a dozen packages at the Post Office in Bayonne, New Jersey last Friday evening and there was one customer ahead of me with three packages. The first two needed no insurance and were weighed and stamped quickly, however the third package needed insurance but the customer had no idea what value to place on it. So when the girl said she would make a call to find out, the Postal employee, let me call her Mable, did the right thing, saying, "Please pay for the two packages now and when you find out the insurance you need I will serve you next, you won't have to wait in line." The girl mumbled something like, "It'll only take a minute..." But Mable insisted and so the girl swiped her credit card (thank God it wasn't cash) and continued to dial some phone numbers.
I was handled next, and since I pre-weigh and pre-print my postage from home, all Mable had to do was scan my packages and throw them into a bin. I was done in under 45 seconds. Meanwhile, the girl was still on the phone trying to find out how much insurance she needed.
The reason employees need to be trained to be attentive to customers waiting on line is that it costs too much to have so many cashiers that no customer will ever be waiting. This PowerPoint Presentation explains the mathematical formulas behind managing waiting lines. If a company does not properly train its employees, then they'll have to hire more cashiers to keep from losing customers dissatisfied with line waiting times.
But we, as customers, also must do out part to make sure the stores we do business with know if their employees do not know how to handle those of us who are waiting behind customers being served.
