12:00a.m. 11 May 2008

| By Jane Gardner

If you have ever been served a cold coffee, refused a table at an empty restaurant or been sneered at for interrupting the waiter’s conversation, you have joined a growing legion of disgruntled consumers.

Melbourne retail expert Debra Templar returned to the Sunshine Coast last week to give a series of seminars on the ills of bad customer service.

And she found one thing was quite clear – we’re still not always getting the customer service we deserve.

“Let’s just say the level of customer service here is patchy,” she said.

“It is inconsistent. Some places it’s quite good and other places you just look at it and go ‘good Lord!’

“People are going: ‘Well forget it, I’ll get my stuff across the internet’.”

Although she believes the Sunshine Coast has a poorer level of service than the competition-driven cities, it’s not just us who have experienced decaying customer service in recent years.

“Everywhere I go, without fail, 99% of people tell me customer service has gotten worse, not better – that’s the horrible thing,” she said.

“I am shocked at the number of inhospitable people in hospitality.

“I think we’ve forgotten customer service is about people.”

Ms Templar travels the country to give business owners the tools to return to a good old-fashioned level of service and train their staff to give their customers the royal treatment.

She is known for setting up one of the country’s most well-known retail training businesses, Australian Retail Services.

She recently finished a series of lectures here lamenting a “customer revolt” that has plagued the country because of poor service.

Her recent experiences on the Sunshine Coast included a frustrating trip to a Caloundra restaurant for breakfast.

“We got there at 7am, there was no one there besides us and two other people, and the waiter looks at us and says, ‘have you got a reservation?’

“We said no and he huffed and puffed and carried on.

“Everything was an effort. It was awful and we won’t go back there.”

In Ms Templar’s experience, it is usually management who possess a negative attitude, not their staff.

“There are quite a few owner-operators who don’t understand service is what sets us apart, and see customers as a nuisance.

“They don’t understand the control is in the hands of the consumer.

“If we don’t like how you treat us, that’s fine, we won’t cause a scene, we just won’t come back.”

And it’s not the unfairly labelled “selfish” Generation Y contributing to the decline in service standards.

“I think we give them a bad rap,” Ms Templar said.

“It’s the older ones who are failing to train them.

“Good or bad service has absolutely nothing to do with age. Some of the best service I have ever had was from Generation Y.”

Share this