Apart from customer service, I found there is no personal space and privacy at the banks. Recently, I had a word exchange at the Sampath Bank head office branch because of people behind me looking over my sholder to see what I am writing and how much money I am depositing etc. Bank tellers are poorly trained in my opinion customer service and client privacy.

Only the Tamil merchants and perhaps the muslims around Kolupittiya have decent customer service. They actually make an effort to please the customer. I am not sure if this a cultural thing or it is just that the business families know that customer service is important.

The Sinhala owned businesses that compete well with the Tamil owned businesses replicate the same level of customer service because they need to treat the customer well e.g. Vogue jewellers.

But generally the Sinhala approach to customer services is quite poor, unless it is at a really friendly single family owned and operated kade. I have stopped at an agricultural department cafe on an outstation trip. The whole family bought some fresh juice. All the transactions were done silently with only a waggle of the head or a nod from the clerks. It was a bit surreal compared to western or even eastern (thai, malaysian, indonesian) customer service. It’s just not in our culture, but once someone starts doing it, and breaks our cultural norms maybe good communicative customer service will catch on.

Imagine a store clerk trying to have a conversation with a mid 50s traditional aunty. She would think the store person is mad, because it’s just not something we do culturally. Beats me why.

The creepy staff that follow you around – I think it’s to be catch out shoplifters? I mean it’s something that is taught across the board at retail stores. Must have some purpose in their minds? Or it’s something that everyone else does?

What I find annoying is the security guard/valet in car park. He sits and watches you struggling to park, and when you alight from the vehicle, he gets activated. ‘No parking here, Madam.’

I find a severe lack of training at such places as Food City. I know where stuff is located at my local branch; but the layout is often different at other branches. I wander around for a few minutes and if I can’t find what I’m looking for I’ll ask a staff member. Unless it’s a very basic item (sugar, chili sauce) they often have no idea what I’m asking for (baked beans? tomato paste?). Or a product is not on the shelf and after confirming that nope, it’s not on the shelf, the employee has to be asked to look in the back. Or the cashier will not have proper change and try to pawn me off with a candy. In a mom and pop shop this is fine, but Cargill’s is a huge corporation. The cashier will then seem surprised when I suggest s/he call the manager to get change from the back.

By now the folks at my local Food City know me; we all say hi to each other, smile, chat a little, and I don’t have to pester them for basic service. But I suspect it’s because I’m foreign and I doubt they treat Sri Lankans the same way.

I notice that in job situations employees are discouraged from problem solving; they have to get someone higher up to make the decision, and often can’t even problem solve enough to ask for that higher-up. Is this a function of education? Culture? Hierarchy? Laziness? I have no idea. Any insights?

Sri Lanka is a backward 3rd world country. We haven’t’ moved forward since the Europeans arrived in 1505. We are actually still the same. I feel even writing about these these is useless. So what do you think will happen. The creepy shop clerks who are following you, thinking you are a shoplifter, will actually read your blog, get the message and stop doing it??? Hik hik :-D

Food City is the worst supermarket when it comes to service. I have literally waited 15 mins for a packet of cigarettes at the Staple St super,even though I was the only customer. I ask for a pack of Bensons, but the overhead rack is locked, and the girl hasn’t a key. So she goes off to find the manager who guards it like the Lord of the Rings. 5 mins later, he comes and opens the rack. No Bensons. So the girl disappears into the back for 10 mins and comes back with Dunhills. I tell her gain that I want Bensons. By then the manager’s opened another rack and found some Bensons. It’s ludicrous. Arpico and Keells are way better, but deteriorating quickly.

The Food City store in our area is the same. The service used to be better earlier. Now you can never be sure that what you need will be available.

The staff are friendly, probably because we’re regulars. But the place is badly understaffed, and the girls always look tired. Most times you have to walk around looking for someone to weigh your vegetables or serve at the meat counter. We’ve started driving to the Keells store two and a half km away, though Food City is just a short walk away.

duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude. i live really close by haha.

Come visit yo, put a tea and then review it :)

The other thing I find is the sales staff or guys at the store really lack knowledge on the products they sell. At Abans or Singer or wherever if you ask questions like “whats the difference between Plasma and LED?” or “what features of this microwave make it cost 15k more?” they are generally clueless on the details. They are there just to tell you the price and warranty details. Even at restaurants most waiters hardly make eye contact or keep checking on the customer.

Sri Lanka does suck when it comes to customer service. I feel part of the problem is the low bar for sales recruitment and lack of training on product details and etiquette. Plus our guys general lazy mentality.

All these comments are of course correct (save for Such – (5) is an ugly thing to say), with many places having staff who are poorly trained, lack motivation, and who often outnumber their customers. If you want to experience serious frustration, try building a house. It’s like shop assistants actively try to avoid selling you things, from the ‘no, can’t get’ answer regarding things they actually do have in the shop to a complete failure to ever respond to queries on the phone or via email. Trying to get a quote can be like pulling teeth.

However, I have found a solution, or at least a fairly reliable fix. If the business is run by Muslims, then you’ve got a pretty good chance that you’ll get attentive service whereby the sales people will try to make a sale. It started out as an observation, and it’s now a surprisingly reliable rule of thumb. I suspect that for many sales assistants, there’s little reward for being more productive (i.e. commission-based bonuses). But if the business is a family affair (which I suspect is often the case in smaller places and those run by Muslims), then they do have an incentive to make the sale.

As an aside, I find the supermarkets here to be fairly ok, as long as you don’t need anything weighing (why can’t they have scales at the tills like everywhere eise?) and provided that they have the item you ask for on a shelf. There’s never an explanation or a brief apology for keeping you waiting, though.

Some places also demand change money. One guy actually asked me to go and find change money from the shop next door. Said he wouldn’t serve me otherwise. Once when i was at Bank of Ceylon for some unavoidable reason they made me go out and photocopy some transaction documents.

I think the larger problem here is not training. Its strategic. Businesses haven’t really realized the strategic value of good customer service and aren’t marketing oriented enough to realize how much of a competitive advantage it really is. What’s disappointing is you find basic and obvious service flaws in big establishments. Recently experienced some pathetic examples from Etisalat and The Phone Company.

I don’t think it’s temp staff. I have seen the same girls behind the counters at Cargills and Keels for years.

LOL! Last Friday I saw the sales staff at an Abans outlet being trained on how to say ‘Ayubowan”. It’s a start.