I did my weekly shop, as usual, at my local Co-operative Food, or as some people call it here in Scotland, “the Copey” – not me, I hasten to add!! I was delighted when the checkout produced a personalized till receipt with £6 off a £60 spend to use within the next week…I can spend that amount without sneezing, I thought! So far so good, a great shopping trip for me and the opportunity to use a carefully saved £5 off a £30 spend coupon I had from a mailing last week, too.

The member of staff who served me was very pleasant, but I was surprised she was there at all me as it was 6pm and she was usually on during the day, every time I had seen her in the past. And I was a long-standing customer, so I knew which faces to expect at different times in the store. I had also noticed that in the past few weeks there was a great shortage of staff in the store, so I asked her why she happened to be on so late.

“Oh”, she commented “I am on a 12noon to 6pm shift.” Wow, that is a long shift, and an odd one, if I might add, I commented.

What ensued was a conversation on the subject of staffing and shortages. Apparently the local store was a little dubious as to whether or not they should take on more staff as rival Sainsbury’s was opening, so they were left understaffed.

How did they solve this problem? The computer did it!! Apparently, they logged the times when the store was busiest, and THE COMPUTER WORKED OUT THE SHIFTS FOR STAFF!!

This is the age of the train….oops, sorry, showing my age….the age of the computer, I mean. Isn’t that taking things too far, though? This poor lady in her fifties had to work on a shift she didn’t want to and was not enjoying because the computer worked out she had a twenty hour week and had to do these twenty hours at the optimum time to suit the shop – no humanity involved whatsoever, just what suited the business of the shop, or the impersonal computer decision…..to me, that’s all wrong! Where is the human element? How impersonal and unfair that is, to shove reliable and mature staff into these busy pigeonholes just to suit a computer-working-out of how busy the shop is, don’t you think? I can understand why it is done, and that the computer is simply meant to be used as a tool to help with deciding when there should be extra staff on hand to cover busy periods but there seems to be very little consultation involved. Maybe I am wrong, maybe there is a discussion with the member of staff on the subject, but it did not seem so, according to this staff member. She was disgruntled because of her shift and having to do it. She HAD to do it. That suggests it was not open to discussion, to me.

My point, I think by now you will have gathered, is that this is customer service gone over the top. I think the personal touch is what a company stands or falls by. If you phone a company looking for a hard-to-source item, you will almost always be directed to the long-standing, mature member of staff who knows where to find this rare item…..for example, I can tell you how to find certain cash register items because I work for a cash register supply company, but someone much younger than me who has only been there a year would not be able to tell you how to find the same thing. That person would not have the experience, know-how or maturity to know these things, but the thing is, they would learn, with time, and patience. But are computers willing to learn? Are they the same as the personal touch? If someone goes out of their way to find you a hard-to-source item, do you not feel special, and as if that was a really special thing for them to do for you, on a personal level? Is that important to you, as a good customer, to have that good PERSONAL customer service? It is to me, and I would be very sad to think that the same thing could ever be done by a computer.

I suppose I may be naieve in some ways, no, I will amend that, I KNOW I am naieve in lots of ways….but naievete and sympathy, compassion and understanding are very closely linked and I really care if I get good customer service from members of staff in all the companies I deal with, from the lowly shelf stacker to the bank counter staff to the postman delivering my letters. I do care. Do you?