Staples’ Customer Service Approach – A Prisoner’s Story

As I mentioned in my previous posting, the Customer Service Desk was used as a punishment that lasted throughout the remainder of my existence with Woolworth.  After leaving that company, my next stop was HQ, the 7 week hell of nothing but a bad experience.  I was hired initially as a customer service desk person there, but I never even got 1 second of training at that counter.  Strangely, I couldn’t even tell you where in the store that counter actually was as I only visited it once on a store tour during my (dis)orientation with the company.

When I started at Staples, I was hired as a cashier, but within a few short weeks, I was training for customer service.  The training here, as with Woolworth, was a mixed result.  Being trained again by 2 females, led to 2 completely different approaches of how to handle the position.  The day person Maggie always seemed to be a very stressed and angry employee, whereas the front end supervisor was always nice and considerate of the employees. 

The most stressful part of the position beyond exchanges and returns was the sale of fine writing instruments.  I had NEVER seen anything that was as bad as dealing with the sale of pens.  It wasn’t just selling them, it was the maintaining them and keeping the inventory in order.  Many times I came into work and found at least 3 to 4 pens that needed cleaning.  It wasn’t a simple procedure as these pens were fountain pens and needed a thorough cleaning.  Each pen took approximately 20 minutes to clean so that it was sparkly and this was bothersome to many of the employees who ran the counter.  Between doing returns, showing pens, and cleaning pens, the position was very stressful. 

Since the pens were locked up, customers always needed to shown the pens and sometimes this could take up to an hour of time if the customer wanted to see many items.  After about 7 years of this, the pens were moved to a display on the sales floor and  no longer required employee intervention.  Of course, Staples discontinues carrying a lot of pens, but the stress was gone.  I will give more details on the reason for the pen inventory drop in a future post. 

Unlike Woolworth, Staples pretty much kept their Customer Service people very close to the front end as they needed them all the time, basically chaining them to the register.  Although sometimes I did manage to run away and quickly return to my post.  It was always with the hope that nobody would ever find out especially the management.  More of a prisoner in a very gated area than a free person to roam as one would want.

Between Staples and Woolworth, there were many similarities in how returns and exchanges happened, but there were also some major differences as well, which is the subject of my next posting. 

Up Next:  Woolworth vs. Staples – Battle of the Returns and Exchange Policies!