Good Service

I was cleaning off my dresser this morning and I found an old receipt from County Market folded around another piece of paper. The receipt was from last week some time. The message with the receipt said:

“Did you receive excellent service from the cashier? If so, please turn this note in to the customer service desk. Cashier name: ___________...”

Wow. When I go to the grocery store I never really look at the receipt because I usually buy few items. I began to wonder if anybody else paid attention to the note when they got it. I’m sure some did but probably not most.

I began to wonder if someone’s employment was riding on that note. The cashier with the most notes turned in must have received some award or was spared expulsion, but what about the cashier with the least?

I imagine some manager got the idea from watching Survivor or some other reality program. The next phase might be a style change in uniform, like oversized tan cotton Gatsby style hats with matching overalls, accented with a lime and orange striped long-sleeve turtleneck shirt and white steel-toed patent-leather Boondockers.

And then what, pieces of flair? Well. How many ways can you vet your staff by humiliating them?

I’m sure the note was meant to be an incentive for employees to be more pleasant than usual. It would work well in the right context. There should be only a positive reward associated with the note and no punishment associated with it.

This means making sure the employees don’t have an opportunity to draw negative conclusions on their own about the incentive program. They should be notified that having the fewest notes turned in doesn’t mean they are the worst at customer service and will suffer for it. They should be told that most customers might not even look at the notes until they get home, if ever, and the program is actually more effective at gathering information about the customer’s habits than the employee’s behavior anyway.

Also, if you are going to post statistics on a board in the break-room about which employee is ahead of the game in this challenge, you’re really not doing the employees any favors, only fomenting animosity among them.

Don’t post the actual number of notes that were turned in for any employees. This way, when the prize is handed out, nobody will know who came in last place, including the person who actually came in last place.