Sometime in the early years of the new millennium Denise and I were in our usual spots, putting through some customer’s purchases and trying to look enthusiastic.
“There you go, thank you for shopping with us this evening,” said Denise happily, handing the bag to a middle-aged woman who grunted in reply and wandered back into the nightlife of Perth.
“Thanks,” I replied to my customer, an old man with a trench coat and a BO problem who payed for the small anthology of erotica stories with a fistful of coins.
OhGodohGodohGod, I added internally, trying not to cringe. The money is still warm.
“What kind of customer service was that?” came a familiar shrill voice behind us.
“What do you mean?” I asked neutrally, forcing myself not to frown. Kimberly had been managing the casual group for a few months, and tempers were beginning to fray. The mousy, ill-tempered manager had become more and more stringent on how the lower staff members interacted with customers, and it said a lot that even the kind-hearted Denise was trying not to roll her eyes.
“I mean, that either of those sales could have had extra merchandise attached to them,” replied the frizzy-haired blonde. “Denise, you could have offered to put the next book in the series on order, and Chris, you –“
Kimberly faltered a little, and I smiled and nodded encouragingly as the short woman tried to come up for some kind of add-on sale for an old man buying hard-core pornography.
“Anyway, it’s obvious you all need more customer service training,” snapped Kimberly. “And don’t think you’re going to weasel your way out of it, Chris.”
I had been pretty adept at having family reunions, exams or just plain Idontwannadoit-itis, but I knew this time Kimberly had me pinned. Sure enough, the casuals were summoned bright and early on a Saturday morning to gather in the large open area of the upper floor.
“Oh God,” grumbled Dan. “There are so many other things I could be doing right now.”
“Same here,” I sighed.
“I don’t think World of Warcraft counts, Chris,” chimed in Lana.
“Bite me,” I replied. “Actually, forget I said that. You’re still reading those godawful Anne Rice books, right?”
“I hope this doesn’t take too long,” whispered Elaine to Denise. “I have another job on this afternoon.”
“Clothes catalogs?” said Denise.
“Pro-mos for a new shopping center,” replied the part-time model.
Anton folded his arms and said nothing, the music student slightly put out that his usual practice space above the store had been taken up for training.
“Alright everyone, thanks for coming along to today’s training,” chirped the middle-aged presenter that I vaguely recognized as a lifer from one of the other stores. “We’re going to be going through a series of sales techniques that can help you sell more products to your customers. Remember, each add-on sale adds up to a significant bonus to the company over the financial year.”
“Oh golly gosh,” whispered Dan over my shoulder. “It’s what I’ve always wanted.”
“Anyway,” continued the presenter, oblivious to Dan’s quiet commentary. “I’m now going to go through the hard sell techniques. I know these aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but they do bring results. Let’s make a start.”
The customer interaction a we were taught at this point were known as the Global Purchase System or something like that, the casuals just nicknamed it the “Golden Globes.” Add-on sales featured heavily, and the overall mentality was that we shouldn’t let a customer leave the store without squeezing at least one extra item from them.
“Ugh, this is going to give the place a really awful atmosphere,” sighed Elaine as we sat around the staffroom table afterwards.
“This is bullcrap,” replied Dan, rolling his eyes. “All this is going to do is drive customers away.”
“A job is a job,” I said with a shrug. “I’m not going back to washing down a fishmongery.”
“And I’m not going back to waiting tables,” replied Lana with a nod. “Even this Golden Globes technique is preferable to that.”
Anton shook his head and put down the book he was reading.
“You’re not seeing what’s really going on,” he said worriedly. “This hard-shell technique? Getting staff in for customer training on a Saturday morning?”
“What d’you mean?” asked San with a frown.
“It means the store isn’t doing as well as it should,” replied the tousle-haired music student. “Otherwise they wouldn’t be trying to squeeze every last drop out of every customer.”
I turned to Denise, but the young woman was simply sitting at the end of the table with her fingertips on her lips as she thought.
“What do you think?” I asked. “You’ve barely said a word about all of this.”
“I don’t think I can do this,” said the tawny-haired woman quietly. “The way this approaches customers – it’s almost bullying.”
Nonetheless, next Friday night the casuals were back at our posts and ready to put the Golden Globes into action.
“Why don’t you try that person over there?” said Elaine, nudging me and nodding at a young mother who was waiting by the front counter. “You can try and do an add-on sale.”
“Hi, would you like me to put those through for you?” I asked brightly, waving to the woman and her two young kids. Internally, I tried to pump myself up to be the aggressive, cut-throat salesperson.
Paul would have better at this, I thought, remembering the tall, blonde law student’s knack for convincing people. Come on, you can do it. Think late-night television salesmen, Jehovah’s Witnesses, charity collectors-
“Excuse me, are you going to put these through?” asked the mother pointedly.
“Ah, yes, sorry about that,” I replied, snapping myself out of it. “These are lovely books, by the way. Are these presents for someone? While I put these through, perhaps I can interest you in a card and a gift bag-“
“No, just put the book through please,” said the young woman, before turning and snapping at her progeny who were playing with the giant stuffed penguin that served as the store mascot.
Trying to rally a little, I slapped on another smile and picked up one of the books from the pile.”
“You know, this is a great story, and we have the next book in the series. Would you like me to get one of the staff to fetch it for you?”
“No,” the woman replied flatly. “Can we hurry this up?”
At this point I was getting a little desperate, and fumbled some bookmarks out of their holder.
“How about some Harry Potter bookmarks for the kids?” I asked with a smile. At the sound of their beloved boy wizard, the you young kids started jumping up and down with delight, tugging at their mother and yelling “Pleeeeeaase?”
The look the woman gave me would have killed a lesser man.
Anton was far more successful with the Golden Globes hard-sell system, the music student’s natural communication skills allowing him to gently direct the customer towards an extra small purchase that they probably didn’t even know they had wanted.
“Oh yes, I remember this book from when I was a kid!” gasped the old man, turning over a copy of Kipling’s The Jungle Book with one hand and fumbling for his wallet with the other. “Do you really think my grandchildren will like it as much as I did?”
“I’m sure of it,” answered the music student with a solemn nod. “You mentioned he was in scouts, I believe? This’d be right up his alley.”
Dan, despite his initial reservations, was surprisingly good at the hard-sell system, at least for the blokey blokes that wandered into the store every now and then to buy books about sports and fishing.
“Mate, mate, put that one away, you don’t want that one,” boomed the muscular casual employee, approaching a similarly buff guy hovering over a stack of books about the local football team.
“What d’you mean?” asked the bloke with a frown. “It’s on special, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, but only ‘cause it’s not as good as this one,” replied Dan confidently, pulling out a larger (and slightly more expensive) book. “This is the one you want, it’s got all the player’s histories in it.”
“Really! You little rippa!”
“Too right, mate.”
Lana and Elaine had some problems with the new system. Elaine would be her bright, bubbly self, and generally was able to cajole the customers into buying that extra pen, bookmark or gift card. She did however run into snarky older women that assumed the beautiful casual couldn’t possibly have read anything more intellectually challenging than a fashion magazine. As for the men, most (sadly, not all) male customers were polite to Elaine, but there were a small number who weren’t.
“Would you like any help today?” asked Elaine, her smile dazzling in her bronze face.
“Yeah,” replied the young man with a sleazy smile. “You could help me with your number. What time do you get off work, baby?”
Almost two decades later and I still cringe at the memory of even being in the same room as guys like that.
Lana had about the same level of success as I did with the Golden Globes system.
“You know, if you’re looking for a gift, why not try one of our art books?” the short uni student replied, her face lighting up as she saw her opportunity. “What kind of art do you think your wife would like? We’ve got Impressionism, Abstract, Pop Art, Architecture-“
“I think she just wanted the John Grisham book,” replied the man worriedly.
“And there’s also a book on Gaudi, although frankly his work is overrated compared to Llord-Wright, but if you look at the overall influence of Le Corbusier-“
“Um, I think I’ll be ok,” murmured the poor man, tying to get a word in edgeways as he backed away from the counter.
“Maybe dial it down a notch, hon,” whispered Elaine after the customer had fled.
“Well I can’t help it if some people have no culture,” sniffed Lana.
“Looks like you might need to have another training session,” called out Dan from nearby, stretching his shoulders with the relaxed confidence of a man who had sold two extra books that evening.
“Go find something useful to do,” growled Lana, slouching grumpily over to till.
“Are you going to find a way to convince me?” grinned Dan, “That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?”
Lana poked her tongue out at the well-built casual but Elaine leant forward, leaning her chin on her hands and looked up at Dan with deep, shining brown eyes.
“Dan,” she said softly, trailing her fingers through long, wavy hair. “Could you help me out and go fetch some more plastic bags from the back?”
I think I, along with several male customers, all unconsciously lurched a few steps to the rear of the store. Dan however crossed his arms and grinned.
“Nope,” he replied. “You can try again though.”
The stunning young casual raised her eyebrow in surprise.
“Impressive,” she replied with a smile.
Meanwhile Denise was not adjusting to the Golden Globes hard-sell system. The tawny-haired young woman had been her usual pleasant self for most of the evening shift, but I could see the moment of struggle on her face every time she approached a customer or put a sale through. For the most part, Denise seemed content just to do her usual job, however it wasn’t long before Kimberly took notice that not all the casuals were doing their part in the new customer service system.
“Denise, I haven’t seen you put through any extra sales yet,” said the small, frizzy-haired woman pointedly, glaring up at the taller casual before her.
“I just don’t think there’s really been an opportunity,” replied Denise vaguely. “There’s still some orders for me to process at the back counter, I’ll just-“
“Absolutely not,” growled Kimberly. “I don’t think you understand how important this is. A&R has received news that a third book store is opening in Perth.”
“Wow, really?” I asked in surprise from my usual position in the central aisle. “When did this happen? Where are they going to go?”
“They’ll open in a month or so in our old location,” replied Kimberly tersely. “And they’ve bought the abandoned cinema next door to open as a book café. Now we’re holding our own against Dymocks up the road, but Perth is just too small for three book stores. Do you understand what I’m getting at?”
Denise nodded glumly, and waited in silence until another customer ambled up to the counter, an elderly woman sporting a dark purple dress and gloves, and a bright red hat.
(I later learnt that this was a uniform specific to a social network of elderly woman in Australia who felt that their needs and contributions had become invisible to larger society).
“Hello dear,” said the old woman pleasantly, putting a CWA cookbook on the counter. “Just the recipe book, thanks.”
This obviously was Denise’s feed line. A&R had stacks of cookery books, from BBC’s “Two Fat Ladies” and latest by Nigella Lawson to the decades-spanning popularity of the “Women’s Weekly Cookbook,” which had been in print so long that the ingredient measurements were still in the old imperial system of pounds and ounces.
“Well, I can see from this book here,” started the young woman, but then faltered to a stop.
I watched as the emotions warred beneath Denise’s tawny brow. The casual employee opened her mouth, stopped, frowned, then screwed up her face in frustration.
Then finally Denise’s expression cleared.
“I think you’re really going to love this one,” Denise finished, her face once again flashing the familiar smile as she completed the transaction.
The old, red-hatted woman smiled and reached forward to pay, but took Denise’s hand in her own.
“Thank you dear,” the pensioner whispered, giving the young woman’s hand gentle pat. “You’re the first staff member I’ve come across who hasn’t harassed me. I’ll be sure to find you next week.”
I’m certain Kimberly was watching from the sidelines, but if she was unhappy, she said nothing.
Denise continued to just be herself throughout the Golden Globes hard-sell experiment. The rest of us muddled through as best we could, but after a month or two it was announced the system had been dumped.
“We can’t sell books to customers if they’re being turned off coming into the store,” said the state manager Gregory, the tall Irishman shaking his head as he addressed us all at a staff meeting.
“From now on, we’re going to focus on building connections with our customers, and make them feel more comfortable in this store than they would in any other,” he continued, nodding towards Denise. “I understand that we already have some very talented staff members in that regard.”
Hovering in the background, Kimberly frowned. Katherine smiled and gave Denise a sly wink.
“I want you all working on how we can connect with customers,” continued Gregory, oblivious. “Remember we’ve got Christmas coming up.”
The lifers grimaced. The casuals grinned. Soon it would be Christmas – the most lucrative time of year.
Of course, not everything went according to plan that year.
But that’s a story for another day.
Leave a Reply