Service please

Can it get much worse? Bank Holiday weekend and I was expecting the worst when my better half decided she needed some tracksuit trousers. Having already made a visit to the nearby factory outlet centre and deciding to return her sole purchase, a trip to town was now called for.


So into the local town centre in mid-afternoon. Parking was easy, despite signs saying the car park we normally used was full. That's a guarantee to turn shoppers away for a start. But a little local knowledge meant we knew there would be spaces.


A trip into the local M&S en route to some other shops did not offer up the required items in size, colour or style. Off to JJB.


Recently refurbished, much better clarity of merchandising and with air conditioning that now works this all looked hopeful. Plenty of staff on the sales floor. But why, o why, o why, have them if they are not going to help potential customers? Why have unstaffed fitting rooms with signs that exhort customers to approach staff if they want to use them?


Just how many sales are JJB missing out on when a potential customer has gone to the extent of getting undressed only to realise they need a different size? A hopeful husband searching through racks of seemingly similar black tracksuit trousers is a recipe for disaster. Meanwhile staff chatted on, and at 4pm on a Saturday one member of staff was sweeping the floor!


En route back to the car and a visit to M&S (again). A new bra was the next sought-after purchase of my wife. She knew what she wanted and self-selected from the vast range. But one woman came in armed with a receipt from a bra purchase made some time previously. The two assistants who helped the customer were efficient and the customer, despite not being furnished with the sought after item, was visibly pleased with the service.


So some differing experiences but it really is up to store management to make sure they and their staff are focused on customers because we are out there but can, and will, go where we are wanted.

More reasons to shop.

Whoppee! After a couple of months of filling up with petrol at my local Morrisons I have now collected the requisite 5000 points to enable me to claim my £5 shopping voucher. As Morrisons is my nearest garage, and I'm not particularly price sensitive to petrol prices, collecting the points was a simple task.


To collect 5000 points requires quite a few visits. With 15 points for every litre, and the current cost at 94 p a litre, I have had to spend over £300 to get my fiver. So I thought I'd do a bit of top-up shopping yesterday (Sunday) in the local Morrisons.


Now don't get me wrong, Morrisons is really a very impressive operator and has the results to show especially since it has managed to integrate the Safeway stores. But yesterday the staff had a shocker - as Alan Hansen, one of the voices of the company's TV advertising, would say on BBC's Match of the Day about a Premiership defender.


So I took my place in the queue behind two other shoppers. Having unloaded my basket of goods onto the conveyor belt ready for processing I waited my turn. The young male checkout operator was having trouble with his till and called over one supervisor who in turn called over another one. No apologies for the wait and once the three of them had decided to close the till the person in front of me had already taken his two items to another till. The customer at the head of the queue was told to go to another till and the three of them got back to trying to sort the problem.

"What about me?" I queried. "You'll need to go to another till" was the reply. No sorry; no offer of help to transport the twenty items already on the conveyor belt to another till.


"Tell you what I'll just leave it" I said. No hint of any effort to help.


I then went to my local Somerfield, got round in half the time and purchased £35 of goods.


Can any retailer afford to turn away £35 of sales just now, never mind the additional costs of re-shelving product and throwing out items such as the yoghurts, cooked meats and chicken thighs which would have been out of the cold chain for twenty minutes? Staff really need to be empowered to go that extra yard, not even a mile, to put things right for customers.

The genius of Apple?

When my son's Ipod Nano stopped working after 14 months I feared the worst; out of guarantee and that's the way it goes with what has come to be just another disposable electronic gadget.


So on Monday 23 February 2009 first stop was the Digital Store in Manchester's Piccadilly. I presented the item to one of the staff who had a cursory look at it and had a quick fiddle declaring that the battery was done and what did I expect after 14 months - but he could replace the battery for £65. I almost hit the roof but kept calm and said that if that was the way Apple treated its customers then they had a problem. He retorted by saying the store was not Apple. As it turned out the store is a third party reseller. I said I'd go to the Apple store in the Arndale Centre but the young man confidently said they would tell me the same.


So off to the Arndale. despite being called 'mate' a couple of times an assistant booked me in for a session with one of Apple's Genius operatives the following day at a time convenient to me.


When I arrived the next day my name and appointment time was on the display above the Genius Bar. A young lady was having her IPhone sorted - which resulted in a no-fuss replacement. This looked hopeful!


Having handed over the Nano my Genius (Dave Johnson) proceeded to undertake some diagnosis of the non-working item. He reached for an instrument that looked very similar to an ear scope and informed me that there was some fluff and chocolate in the ear phone socket and the port. He told me he would be back in a short while as he would pass some compressed air over the item to remove the offending debris. True to his word he was back quickly and then told me he would update the software. Before I knew it, the item was back in full working order.



So well done Apple but you need to keep an eye on your third party sellers who could have done real damage to the brand.

New kid on the block

What is it about the Nordic retail offer that has style written all over it? I'm just back from my first visit to the recently opened clas ohlson store in Manchester's Arndale Centre. Only its second UK store, the other being in Croydon, the company has been in existence for 90 years. According to its smart A5 catalogue the company claims to offer competitive prices, a broad product range and convenient location.

Sited next to Argos I was half-expecting to be confronted by an Argos-like experience given the piles of catalogues at the entrance to the store. Instead I was met by clearly merchandised product over three floors, although I have to admit I was a bit confused by its somewhat eclectic product mix: garden shredders, tents, pens and paper, light bulbs, tools, door handles, watches, kitchen gadgets and so on. The five categories go under the sections of hardware, electrical, multimedia, home and leisure - a mix of Woolworths, IKEA, Wilkinsons, B&Q, Currys, Argos, H Samuel.

Plenty of staff around, all smartly turned out but can't quite get a feel for what the compelling reason to shop there is. Is variety enough? Certainly just about all the products are portable but are these two factors enough? I mean a plastic box is a plastic box isn't it?

And when I tried, their web site wasn't working.

I'll watch with interest as another Nordic entrant to the UK scene, ILVA, did not last long.