While so called bricks and mortar shopkeepers whinge and moan about falling sales, it appears they are not listening to what the great unwashed masses are telling them. And it may not be just by voice, but also by action and even body language.

This is not simply related to the tech industry alone either by the way, not does it matter a jot if you are in the city, a small country town or in the Bush.

Take yesterday. Yes it’s the all too familiar (by now) HP Touchpad saga. As many know, I am 100Km from the nearest decent town (Bunbury in WA) and nearly 300Km from Perth. With such a good price on the Touchpad, I rang the nearest Harvey Norman store (in Bunbury) and asked about the ‘special’ price. This was at 11:30am, 30 mins before the shopping melee would kick in.

The staff member didn’t know anything about it despite being a manager of the computer section, and went away for 5 minutes, presumably to call head office. When he came back, he confirmed the sale, but indicated in the negative when I asked to have a 32GB unit put away while I took the hour or so to drive up there.

OK this was somewhat understandable, first in best dressed and all that, so I offered my credit card number. The answer flabbergasted me. “We can’t take a credit card over the phone without you coming into the store to sign a form”.

Eh? I remember watching one of John Cleese’s brilliant sales training videos, when after reading the T & C on the reverse of the paperwork, Cleese commented “there are more reasons for not buying from you than there are for buying the product.”

Some weeks back I wanted a cover for a Samsung Tablet and the lack of information, sales ability but corresponding surfeit of outright lies and bad manners jolted me. And this applied to every one of the “big” tech retailers. No wonder people are staying away. Indeed, I have heard it said many times of late that at least one of the big tech retailers is only entered when you really, really have to buy something now. And only then when it’s a Sunday.

The same applies no matter the industry it seems. It doesn’t matter whether you are buying a Lotto ticket, a newspaper, groceries, a book of stamps or filling the car with fuel, there is a serious trend to lack of service, complete indifference and simply an attitude of us, the customer, interrupting them, the one trying to get our dollar. They (shopkeepers) don’t WANT to know about us, our needs, wants, dislikes and what tickles us. They couldn’t care less. What a wasted opportunity.

Product knowledge is also appalling. When I was involved in sales via a showroom, I made it my business to know as much about everything as I possibly could that I was involved in selling. The reason was simple. Statistics prove that if a customer walks out of a shop empty handed, they will most likely not come back to buy that product you were trying to sell. So I had to make sure I could answer EVERY question, and, if not more importantly, show the product doing EXACTLY what the potential client wanted. If this succeeded, they had no reason to go anywhere else and ker-ching, a sale.

It didn’t matter if the item was big or small; the thing was to build up a customer base so they came back to you for the big ticket items later. And it worked.

These days, I see sales people in my field, giving wrong information or telling outright porkies in order to sell product, not satisfy customer needs, but to satisfy stock quotas or commission levels.

Proper customer service simply doesn’t happen today – or if it does it is so rare I haven’t seen it for years. For what it is worth, and yes a plug even though they are now 4000Km from me, the last time I saw service like this as described was at BP Avalon in Sydney where ‘driveway service’ and a complete under bonnet and tyre pressure check still survives. For 4 years my car ran on nothing but BP, it was the only place it was serviced.

Complaints of customers simply “price checking” have been around since Moses opened a burger bar in competition to Noah’s Fish ‘n’ Chippy, and if you treat your customer’s right, it is a nonsense argument. Price is the immediate knee jerk reaction, but if you argue with a customer over price, you will lose every time.

Because of this spreading malaise, disease, cancer, call it what you will, a whole new shopper has emerged. One that simply takes their business elsewhere. The fact that this seems to be online is just a coincidence. If there was no ‘net, it would be somewhere else.

At Auscam, we do like to name and fame those that give top service to our readers, so please feel free to offer up your bouquets to me via david@auscamonline.com and tell us your story. We’ll be sure to let the company, store, manager and individual person (if known) to our readers, and give those nominated a free 6 issue subscription to Auscam!

By David Hague

David is the owner and publisher of AusCam Online. He has a background in media dating back to 1979 when he first got involved with photojournalism in motorsport, and went from there into technology via a 5 year stint with Tandy Computers. Following that, he ran a software distribution company on the Gold Coast and was one of the first to recognise the potential of Microsoft Windows.

Moving back to WA, David wrote scripts for Computer Television for video training for the just released Windows and Office 95 among others, and was then lured to Sydney to create web sites for the newly commercial Internet in 1995, building hundreds of sites under contract to OzEmail including Coates Hire, Hertz Queensland, John Williamson, the NSW Board of Studies and many, many more.

He went back into full time journalism as the Managing Editor for Channel 7's 'Gadget Guy', Peter Blasina's publications VideoCamera and Pixelmag, before starting Australasian Camcorder magazine when these publications were shelved. He lives at Sydney's Avalon Beaches nearly on the ocean front with dog Budweiser and in his spare time is a nut for motor sport, road safety, fishing, science fiction - especially Dr Who - and technology.

David can be contacted via david@auscamonline.com