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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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?

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?