CDR King's Poor Customer Service

photo credits: ekspoze.wordpress.com

Earlier in the day, I went to SM City Pampanga to meet up with a college friend. Before going to our meeting place, I decided to drop by the CDR King store, since the laptop sleeve I used had no handle, and my lappy is constantly slipping from my fingers. I anticipated that there would be no customers yet, because it was quite early. When I arrived, though, there were already 4-6 customers before me.

As soon as I arrived, I called on a saleslady to ask a quick question, before getting a number. I was the only customer in that section, and the saleslady was not doing anything, and yet, when she passed by me, she completely ignored me, and never looked my way. When she made her way back to where she came from, I called on her again, and she looked, but only to tell me, "please get your number". I thought, fair enough, if you want to strictly follow your rules even when I wasn't asking to be assisted yet, i will respect that.

The incident that followed completely used up all the patience I had left. See, there were about 5-6 sales person in the store, but only 1 was assisting customers. To add to the problem, the customer being served were requesting a lot of things, not minding the other customers waiting for her to finish (not blaming her, though). There were customers waiting, and around 4 or more sales people were moving around the store, not doing something important. In fact, the lady I called who asked me to get a number arrange one item in its case. Was that more important than serving waiting customers?

I told myself, 'be more patient', as minutes passed by. But when I couldn't take it anymore, I asked the only sales lady assisting, "Miss, ikaw lang ba ang pwedeng mag assist?", that was when they all scrambled to assist me, since I was next in line. I didn't shout, but they must have noticed the tone of my voice was verging on that.

To my disappointment, the lady who ignored me when I entered the store was the one who was assigned to assist me. Even if I was really pissed of, I almost smiled when I heard the other sales people greeting customers, asking them what they need, becoming friendly - after what I did. Shouldn't they have done that even before a customer temper had gone off because of poor customer service? Even when I tried to sound cool while the lady assisted me, I couldn't hide what I felt. Honestly, I was tempted to look at their items and leave without buying just to teach them a lesson. I didn't do that.

What is really up with CDR King's store procedure, right? I feel like I was in bank or payment center when I'm there. It's messed up, instead of being organized. Would it be really a sin to answer a quick question from a customer? Should their sales people ignore customers just because they have this number thingy going on? I have worked with sales and customer service for many years, and customer is always first is the rule of all companies I worked with. If I were they, I'd station two employees per section, and they would only assist customers who need items there. Visits to CDR King stores are mostly bad experiences for me. I have had it with this one, that's why I'm blogging about it.