Dean Minnich: The best customer service is good manners

I recently thanked a Walmart employee for her great customer service. She broke into a really big “Wow, thank you grin” and thanked me for thanking her. It could have lasted longer than a Japanese farewell at the Tokyo train station. Everything except the arches.

It’s cool on social media to make fun of Walmart shoppers, but I have a lot of respect for people who don’t care what friends think about where we shop.

Labels on clothing mean little to me. I don’t even expect something I bought under one label a year or so ago to be as well made now as it was before. The model of big companies is to become bigger companies by charging more and supplying fewer products. I recently bought some shirts that went to the rag box after only three washes.

The number of people stocking the shelves and managing the cash registers is dwindling and under increasing pressure from an impatient and surly public. But that’s part of the profit plan that rewards executives at the expense of employees and customers.

Some servers at a local food market told me that the crowd seems angry, and people are taking it out on servers and employees.

My take on the supermarket wars is that the robotic self-checkouts are doing more harm than good when it comes to service. Company management would like to amortize the costs of the electronic check-out service and not have to pay for recruiting, hiring, training, paying, and offering incentives and benefits to real people.

So the customers are attacked by dictatorial machines that insist they put the item in the bag or don’t put the item in the bag and imply that you are stupid and too slow to shop here. To make matters worse, the automated system is so inefficient that it requires two or three employees to intervene and reset the process, adding to the customer’s sense of insult.

So when I walked into Walmart and asked an employee straightening a shelf of produce if they carried small Swiss Army knives, she dropped what she was doing. Then she cordially brought them out from the front of the bottom shelf of a display cabinet – as far away as possible – and came forward smiling.

I told her I appreciated her. And the people in the pharmacy and the inspectors who keep an eye on customers’ bags as they go out. And the people at returns and the customer service desk.

Big stores ran many stores in small towns that went out of business, which was part of the storyline of my first novel: Angel Summerand I have been a long-time supporter of local small businesses.

But now robots and online sales are putting pressure on the big local stores, and the very essence of customer service is threatened when we forget that no matter how big the company, the local people who handle sales and service keep it all running.

I did shop work, hard work and low pay. Stocked shelves, bagged groceries and took out the trash for minimum wage. But it was a job, and it was local, and it was an integral part of my education and my life’s journey.

Dad said it doesn’t cost you anything to be nice to people, and that sometimes it’s just a matter of taking the time to show appreciation.

We have transitioned into a culture that requires choices, and we have chosen to devalue personal interaction to a large extent. Bad choice.

Dean Minnich writes from Westminster.