“Did you find everything you were looking for?”

This seems to be the new question de jour at our local grocery store when we check out.

The desired response, apparently, is, “Yes.”

But what happens when the answer is, “No”?

“No, somebody hasn’t purchased enough inventory, so you are out of a variety of fresh vegetables. We also came looking for a particular cut of meat that is often stocked, but you didn’t have that either.”

The cashier’s response?

“Oh.”

She had nothing to say, she stood in awkward silence, then just ignored the problem.

Don’t have your staff ask questions that they aren’t prepared to follow up on.

If the cashier, in response to our complaint, had picked up the phone, called the vegetable manager and the butcher to find a solution then the question is worth asking.

Or…

If the cashier had logged our complaint and the manager had compiled them all at the end of every day to track the leading complaints and then managed inventory levels to alleviate the most common ones. That would be productive.

But…

Teaching your staff friendly questions like “Did you find everything you were looking for?” and not equipping them to handle the responses makes your business look bad and just ticks off the customers.

Cheers

Steve

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