Customer Assistance Buttons

[TequilaSunrise]

Just be happy you don't work at Target. They are absolutely freakin' nuts with their call buttons. They have about 4 or 5 of them in the electronics department alone.

Oh. My. God. I. HATE. Those. Buttons.

Want to know what's weird? Those damn things go off in areas that don't even HAVE call buttons!! "Guest assistance in boys/girls/lingerie/tableware/mens...none of them have call buttons, and they go off every once in awhile! Oooo-eee-oooo.

And yeah, there's always some douchetard that runs around pressing all the buttons.

One of my coworkers (an older lady...60ish) fell and banged herself up pretty good tonight rushing to shut off one of those damn things. Worst invention ever. HATEHATEHATE

And Knightmare... @ wheelygig, widdershins, and dihydrogen monoxide. Beautiful.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

I actually think call buttons can pretty useful if they're not overdone and you have enough people to respond to them when needed.

My impression is that Target views their call buttons as a substitute for employees. Like everybody else, they want to provide really great service but don't want to train and pay a bunch of people to work on the salesfloor.

So they just install call buttons everyplace they can, make the employees run like headless chickens, make the voice on the call buttons be that of a rather bitchy lady who makes it clear you better drop what you're doing and answer the button (no "thank you," just a "who is responding!?"), and assume that if the buttons aren't being cleared in time, it's because the employees are a bunch of lazy slugs.

Something I forgot in my earlier post: Target might even have call buttons in their bathrooms. I mention this because every so often, when I'm shopping there, I will hear a "restroom checkup" paged over an employee's walkie talkie.

[Imogene]

Something I forgot in my earlier post: Target might even have call buttons in their bathrooms. I mention this because every so often, when I'm shopping there, I will hear a "restroom checkup" paged over an employee's walkie talkie.

I'd bet that's a scheduled reminder for someone to do an hourly checkup on the restrooms, to make sure they're not absolutely filthy.

[Lehk]

I'd bet that's a scheduled reminder for someone to do an hourly checkup on the restrooms, to make sure they're not absolutely filthy.

that would NEVER fly where i work, we even have special code announcements for dealing with garbage

[childofsolitude]

And then there are always those people that push the button, making you have to run from the front of the store to clear it, only to get there and have the customer say "Sorry, my daughter pushed it accidentally. She was playing with it". Ergggghhhh. Then there are those people who push the button and after clearing it they say "I can never find employees in this store". Um, ma'am? That's why we have call buttons. We're not Walmart where there are 6 million people working and you can find an employee in every aisle. It's difficult to be 10 places at once. And it's even more difficult when there are only 7 of us working on the floor in the entire store.

[friendofjimmyk]

There is some false sense of entitlement among folks like this woman. I, personally, LOVE paint departments, if I was her, I would've spent HOURS standing at the wide variety of color samples mixing and matching other ideas while I waited my turn. I am weird, I love stores like Lowes & Home Depot.

[Tria]

I re-adjusted the wheelygig, turning it widdershins. I even adjusted the dihydrogen monoxide levels to see if it would take a better reading.

Counter clockwise.... Adjusted the WATER levels? LMAO.

[Kiwi]

I've said, so other customers could hear me, "Okay, ma'am. Tell you what. You get permission from all the people in front of you to cut in, and I'll bump your order to the front of the line. As long as they don't have a problem with it, I don't have a problem with it. They might not be as busy as you are." Said as cheefully and helpfully as I could muster, of course.

Ive done that and customers have definitely gone around and asked, one lady tried shoving her items into my hands pushing infront of three other older woman who were extremely unamused, when I pointed out that I was sorry she was running late but she still has to wait her turn, the other ladies voiced there opinions to, all agreeing with me..... after all they had been waiting FOREVER to!!!

One of my little stress release factors at the craft shop was that we had no defined "this is the line" areas, people just came up to the counter where there was a space. Because of this I couldnt always keep track of who was next so I would step back, and ask calmly "ok ladies, who was next in line" then wait. I let them sort it out among themselves, sometimes they would get very angry with each other demanding that they were next!!!

naughty I know, but it gave me a chance to breath and throw some more product into the "return to the shelf bins"

if they behavied and were polite and didnt squabble with each other I got through all of them alot faster, so if they misbehaved all they were doing was causing a longer wait. So their bad behaviour didnt effect me, it effected them. My service was the same, how long they waited was always determined by their actions.

this worked especially well at christmas when we just couldnt get through the ques, we would have 10-15 people waiting at the door to get in at opening, each employee would usually have 10 people waiting for them by an hour after opening.