Spencers, I believe needs no introduction in today’s world. Today I’m going to cite my experience there. This store is located in South City mall in Kolkata. Well, South City Mall is supposedly the largest and the best and goes without saying the most expensive mall in Kolkata. I think the most pronounced word in all our MBA life is customers. And that’s the word that really goes well with South City Mall too. Somehow they managed to attach the tag for their customer services. But spencers today aptly proved how this particular and probably overused word remains as a part of B – school’s jargon only.
My sister is an avid shopper and I’m just the opposite. I feel really scared at the idea of waiting at the counter with my sister trying out a thousand outfits only for a few hours and me smiling at the person sitting on the counter like a fool. The good thing is as a matter of courtesy, she never fails to smile back. Probably mujh pe taras khake.
But this time we went to get a suitcase replaced which we bought from there. There was only a few hapless customers like us who has come for some replacement. When I said that we want to replace the suitcase, the face of the customer service officer dripped like local ketchup, which drips with the minimum inclination. Looking at him I thought if I have just said that I’m planning an escape with his wife? All he had to do was to prepare a Credit Note. And believe me it’s so damn difficult to prepare it in a computer with an MIS installed. You actually have to do so much typing. He told us to wait as he was wrapping somebody else’s purchases. We only had to wait a little over 20 minutes. Now that’s really a very short time to wait, isn’t it? The credit note had to be signed by some authorized signatory which took another close to 15 minutes. During that short time all I had to do was to get back to my old useless time pass i.e. smile at people. Probably that’s the most optimal utilization of time rather than staring at people like an owl. Finally it was done and we got the suitcase replaced.
But then my mom had to buy some crockery for somebody. My heart started pouncing like AR Rehman’s beats at the idea of getting it gift wrapped and going back to him. Ultimately we had to go for it. When I asked the person to get it done, then came the golden words we don’t do gift wrapping. Being an ideal son and an ideal brother, I couldn’t take the fact that my mother’s words are not fulfilled. So instantly I protested and said that I have seen you wrapping just sometime back. Then again came another magical word “wait”. Since it was a Sunday, I couldn’t find the store manager as I demanded to talk to him. But I promised them that I’ll come back the next day and meet him. When that fellow was doing the most difficult job of the world i.e. gift wrapping our purchases, he had a damn valid question which he asked his colleague. “Why do people have to gift wrap items with us and why can’t they do it themselves. Everyone says this is a gift and that leaves us with so much of pain”. It was this wonderful line which prompted me to talk to the manager, but alas GOD was not there with me this time. So I have to go again and talk a heart out to our very dear manager of spencers. Believe me; I’m waiting so damn eagerly to see him. And during all this time he had that great dripped face which I mentioned earlier.
This made me sincerely realize one thing; we always talk about customer service and customer satisfaction in the area of retailing and marketing. But is it actually being followed properly? Can we really expect this kind of lackadaisical behavior from such a prominent name like spencers? Is it our fault to shop from Spencers?
