Readers Comments - October 2016


Thanks to all our readers who have sent in messages and comments over the last few weeks. I've picked out a couple of comments that I thought were really interesting, and made some further comments of my own.


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AN APOLOGY TO ALDI
(article dated 18.10.16)

"Strange! The various Aldis that I've been to have very good staff and, assuming they've got enough of them, they'll open a new till to cope. However, one thing I hate is for a till to be closed in front of me and then for it to reopen when I've joined a longer queue. Sort it Aldi!"

Dave Fisher (Davici Consulting)

OUR COMMENT - yes you're right Dave. I think some of Aldi's branches are better than others regarding customer service. To be fair to Aldi, the branch I visited was based in a highly concentrated student area, and it was during the first week of the new academic year. There seemed to be a large influx of young people (probably students) all entering the store at the same time. I think the store were just totally overwhelmed and didn't expect so many people to arrive at once.

But having said that, I have noticed that Aldi never seem to allow any 'slack' in staffing levels. They seem to operate on the basis of having 'just enough' staff in their stores. This means that if there is a sudden unexpected spike in the number of shoppers, they're not able to cope.



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HANGING ON THE TELEPHONE
(article dated 15.10.16)

"On the flip side, NPower do actually offer a ring back. Which would be great ... except that last week I took advantage of the service only to have their bots ring me back four times more afterwards over two days. Day 2 starting at 8am and again 15 minutes later after I put the phone down. So then I had to make another call to them and go through the whole "press button XX ... hanging on the line for ages ... scenario to ask someone to "please make it stop". Grrr."

Gerry Crookes (Crux Communications)


OUR COMMENT - Good point Gerry. I've experienced this several times myself, and it is infuriating. I think that these companies regard customer service as a 'tick box' exercise - and they have forgotten about the personal aspects of customer service. Unfortunately this type of thing is going to get much worse over the next few years with the onslaught of 'bots' and automation within customer contact centres. I will deal with this very subject in an article I'm publishing on here later this week. 

Thanks again to all the people who have sent in comments. Please keep sending your thoughts and comments and we will publish the best ones again next month.