On Saturday morning, I had patiently waited for 15 minutes to reach the front of the payment queue and was directed to a young man at one of the many counters. The young part-timer was still sorting out the printed receipts when he realized that he had forgotten to return the credit card of the previous customer who have left the payment area and had probably headed towards the collection area for another queueing episode.
The cashier quickly alerted his supervisor standing about 15 feet away. The supervisor came over, took a look at the card, placed it back near the payment terminal and said "I cannot tell who is the cardholder and he will come back here once he realized that he had forgotten to take his card."
I was shocked at the response: the customer did not forget to take his card. It was the cashier that had not return the card with the receipt to the customer. The focus of the customer's attention was on the receipt required for the collection of the products that he had purchased. Even if it was the customer's fault, it is good customer service to attempt in returning the card knowing that the customer had moved to the next part of the sale process of collection.
Although the supervisor cannot identify who is the customer by face, the cardholder's name is clearly embossed or printed on the card so the supervisor could have easily call out for the customer and locate him at the collection queue. The supervisor had failed to prevent a bad customer experience. Imagine the inconvenience caused if the card loss was not detected by the customer until he had left the Philips carnival sale.
Do your employees put themselves in the shoes of the customer?
