I had some trouble with my cell phone so naturally I went to the cell phone store to have it fixed.

What an adventure.

Packed with unhappy customers. There was no place to sit. There must’ve been 25 customers, 18 of them waiting while the other 7 customers were being waited on by the attendants. Here is the characteristics of this event:

• The store was packed and everyone in the store, customers, and service reps alike, were unhappy
• All 4 interior walls of the store were ordained with wonderful posters of wonderful, smiling, happy people with wonderful phones and wonderful happy people waiting on them and smiling in near nirvana delirium at the opportunity to please their customers!

Here is what really was in the store, and remains in the store to this day:

• The store is crowded with no place to sit and not enough customer-hatred reps to take care of the crowd.
• All the walls have the same posters of happy business associates or families smiling, which in no way depicts what is happening in the store.  No one in the store is happy and most are mad or nearing shout level-voice decibels.
• The basic business element of this store, smart phones, is a phenomenon in the sense that people are still going to the store.

Back to the customer hatred-reps.  They are as miserable as the customers.

Why?

Because they are in the same boat the customers are in.

The customers cannot fix their own problems — the phone providers in the store must do that.  Guess what?  They, the customer-hatred reps, ARE NOT GIVEN the tools to help these people!  It is a natural human emotion to try to help people, and in the case of not being equipped to do so, frustration arises.  Management has not given these employees the support or the authority to do simple things that are simple solutions to confusing and frustrating problems. I heard the same complaints over and over and over and the same, frustrating, answers from the support personnel over and over.

One of the many pieces of America’s Customer Service Disaster is the absence of management in giving people the tools to be successful in their jobs. And giving them the leeway to please customers and have a little satisfaction in what they do.

But forget that.  A smiling poster might make the customer happier.

I’m Paul Karem.  Use this website to enhance the customer service in your career, business or trade.  If it doesn’t work I will personally take the poster down.