Customer Feedback - A Customer Service Essential

Well it's another day and another dollar, right? I was shopping with my wife last night, not my favorite thing, but it does make her happy. We were looking at bunkbeds for my 4 year old daughter. When ever we go somewhere I, as always, go fact finding and take the time to talk with the managers and especially the floor clerks. As always I come across various issues and this time I found very disturbing pattern that seems to popping up in med sized businesses. By the way small and large businesses aren't immune to this either. This disturbing trend consist of the lack of concern in developing different avenues for customer feed back.

At this particular furniture store they have a policy that I felt was somewhat unfair to the unsuspecting consumer. Basically, it trapped them into making further purchases to gain a discount. Which, in and of itself, is a poor customer service/sales policy. Anyway, when I talked to the clerk concerning the issue he didn't want to hear it. Hmmm, I thought something is wrong. So I asked if he would mind passing my concerns on to the manager and he said sure, but they never listen to the staff. In fact, during the year that he has been working there, he has never been able to pass any customer concerns on. Both store management and upper management discourage any floor level feed back.

This is a BIG PROBLEM!!!!!!!!!!!! The staff is your first line for feed back and should have a daily if not weekly debriefing by managers, owners, or department heads. This ongoing debriefing should include discussions and input response from management. Hey, this lak of customer care totally sucks and does more to harm you customers loyalty than to promote it. Let me put it this way, I'm not making a trip back to that store anytime soon.

What's your opinion?

If you want a good article go to Building Feedback Channels where there is more information.