[TW]Fox;21542163 said:
Wow, if ever there was an example of how full of themselves sales assistants can be, this has to be it. Did you seriously just post that?
I do not think my viewpoint is full of themselves, more one who has become overly jaded after 7 years in a sales role. Perhaps my points were made in a fashion to get a reaction, but that is to an extent the way I feel.
[TW]Fox;21542163 said:
I actually am amazed we have somebody who works in a high street shop who genuinelly feels that unless you actually wish to buy you shouldn't enter!
That was not quite the point I wanted to get across. I was always just as happy to deal with customer service issues as I was to sell, as it meant there was genuine work to be done - something that would have an outcome, either a phone sold or an issue resolved.
I found the most frustrating thing about my time working on the high street to be dealing with those people just browsing. I don't mean the people that are intent on purchasing a device and want to make an informed decision by visitting several stores and getting an idea of the products available, I mean people who would come into a store just to play with handsets and talk.
An example of this would be a customer who is 6 months into his 18 month contract, a new handset has come out and he would like to take a look it. He informs you early on that he still has 12 months to run on the contract, so wont be buying but just wants to see what the phone can do. You spend 20 minutes with this person, you have to demonstrate almost every single feature of the phone to him. At the same time you can see other people waiting, some have money in their hands, but you cannot get away, you cant just fob somebody off because they are not buying, as much as you want to.
The problem with the scenario above is that you very rarely see a positive outcome from it. When you sell a phone you have a happy customer leaving with a new handset and a smile on their face. When you solve a customer services issue you (hopefully) have a tangible end result, the phone is fixed, a setting is changed, bills are explained, whatever - but hopefully at the end of it a disgruntled customer is now a contented customer. From my example above, I feel like I've had no impact on the situation, the guy wanted to look at the phone, he has looked at the phone, thanked me and now left. If in 12 months time he decides he still wants to purchase that handset the likelyhood that I will even find out about it is effectively 0. There is no satisfying end to it for me. I understand that it was my job to help him, which I did to the best of my ability, but at the same time its something about my job that I found incredibly frustrating just like there are things that most of us find frustrating about our work.
[TW]Fox;21542163 said:
This is the problem for retailers with commission based payment structures. For the staff it becomes all about ticking the boxes to get the money and not about the customer service. As you've just perfectly demonstrated. What a stunning ambassador for the brand somebody with such a viewpoint must be!
I'm hoping that my comments above have changed your opinion from this section here, as I disagree with what has been said - I can understand how you feel from the original posts that I may have all about ticking boxes to generate money but I take real issue with that. I do not doubt that people like that exist in mobile phone retail, I have worked with many of them - but despite my opinions that was not me.
I would also like everybody to note that I no longer work for Vodafone, and am not associated with them in any capacity so please do not judge a pretty decent company on the bitter ramblings of an ex-employee!
![[TW]Fox](/data/man-of-honor/2009.png){kind=avatar}
