More trouble at Tesco

I recently posted about Tesco on my marketing blog, regarding my frustrating attempt to get a straight-forward answer from a Tesco call centre employee. Well, plus ca change.

More recently I tried to sign up for a Tesco credit card so I dialled the number given on my new ClubCard mailing. The Scottish woman I spoke to told me I could sign up online. Fine, says I, but can’t I also do it over the phone, since this was advertised as such - and indeed one of the options I was given by the automated call routing system was: “To sign up for a Tesco credit card press 1”, which I duly did.

“No,” she said. “You cannot sign up over the phone.” I repeated the above a couple more times, and she repeated her non-negotiable statement a couple more times, impervious to my assertion that this response defied logic. I asked to speak to a manager. Another Scottish accent came on the line, this time male.

I relayed the conversation and told him I was pressing the matter as a point of principle. He said he couldn’t comment because he hadn’t been privy to our exchange. I said that was a ridiculous thing to say: either take my word for what happened or record all phone calls, but don’t come over as if you are some kind of neutral judge, above the fray. Or is this the new teaching in customer service school? He simply responded that the woman I’d spoken to was a longstanding employee who knew how to do her job.

But then he said: “We can mail you an application form if you wish”. I said, that is all she needed to tell me!!! It was the obvious answer to my question: “Why would Tesco advertise a telephone number to call if you cannot actually make any meaningful use of that number?!”

But still the manager failed to acknowledge my point or to utter anything remotely resembling an apology - even for any misunderstanding.

Am I contributing to this Tesco arrogance and idiocy by joining their loyalty scheme and thus doing my bit to make them even more of a monopoly? Probably. But my Tesco shoddy customer service file is now well and truly open for business!

PS: For a long time now Tesco's advertising slogan has been: "Every little counts!" It recalls that old frugality motto: "Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves."

The implication is that Tesco pays attention to detail. But where is that same attention to detail when it comes to frontline staff training?!

Ed: Retail is detail?

Today I discovered yet again why so much offline retail is dying on its feet.

I visited Rymans, PC World, Comet and Curries in search of a reasonably elegant, simple, low-cost black and white printer. None of them had one. A couple of them had Hewlett-Packard printers that would have sufficed, but the display models were pointless because there were no boxed versions for sale.

The so-called sales staff in all these stores were uniformly useless. PC World shops only seem to motivate one member of staff - the guy who sits on a raised chair by the exit and watches to see if you are stealing something. So pleasant to have his distrustful gaze on your back! All the other staff are either unavailable, ignorant about the products or evasive when you try to get their attention.

Ditto for the other stores I visited. Admittedly, I was in the "poor" neighbourhood, London's Old Kent Road, which I would avoid like the plague if it wasn't a local shopping area. It is a grim, soulless place at the best of times, let alone on a dark winter evening.

As for Rymans, my first stop because it is closest to home, they had some fax machines but no printers. I was amazed before I remembered that "office supplies specialist" Rymans never seems to have what I want.

Why is it such a challenge to find what one would expect to be the most basic of items in today's digital world? And why was the design of almost all the printers I saw - whether Canon, HP, Epson or the others, so poor?

After all, this product has become integral to most homes, and most homes today aren't big enough to contain an "office" in which to hide ugly "office" stuff. A printer is just as likely these days to be found in the kitchen, on full public display.

And what does it say about these "brand name" retailers that they have underinvested so shockingly in their frontline staff?

The only detail in today's retail appears to be online. Offline retailers seem to be surviving purely on the basis of their physical location and on yesteryear's brand building. It's a sorry sight indeed and evidence that the centre ground is disappearing: aggressive discounting has migrated onto the web, as has sophisticated self-service.

In the face of this, offline retail is only prospering if it is niche or able to offer the added-value of full-on human interaction.

How ironic that it has come to this: I can search for goods in the "virtual" world and feel completely at home, always just a few clicks away from useful information and a potential purchase. Yet wandering around the "real" world of Comet, Curries, PC World et al, I am all at sea, miles away from any kind of useful information or advice.

The best I can say of this afternoon's futile shopping trip is that it reminded me of why I now spend so much time online. I'll grudgingly admit that it did get me on my bike for a while - although the fitness factor was counteracted by breathing in fumes from the filthy Old Kent Road and dodging dangerous drivers.

Norman Tebbit, Margaret Thatcher's right-hand man in the 1980s, was (in)famous for telling unemployed Brits to get "on your bike" and look for work outside their immediate locale. Well, consumers like me are dumping our real-world bikes and getting on our virtual bikes instead.

The global village feels so much closer, better and safer than the underinvested retail badlands on our doorstep.