Ash Long emailed me yesterday with this story of poor customer service by his local newsagent. I share it here with his permission:
I like that the Australian Newsagency Blog has news of new avenues where businesses can be grown and profits maximised.
But I wonder if sometimes a reminder is needed that newsagents must not neglect their core business. As a newspaper publisher, I spend about $250 per week on papers and magazines at the local newsagency. I do not seek discounts, I do not receive loyalty rewards. I pay by cash, as I have done over the past 22 years.
It has been drummed in to me at this blog for newsagents to promote their ‘putaway’ service. So, when I had to be away interstate last weekend, I asked the counter-staff woman to please put aside the Thursday-Sunday editions of the Herald Sun and The Age, and that I would return in the following week to pay and retrieve the papers.
It wasn’t done. The counter staff said the newsagent counter-manded their efforts, and returned the papers, so my request was unfulfilled. Not a big deal, you might say. Only 8 newspapers. But those issues were important to me. I was only trying to be a good and loyal customer. The newsagent did not let me know of his decision. I have left a message for him, but he still has not called with an explanation (or an apology).
I feel disrespected as a customer. I feel that the newsagent should no longer have my $1000-a-month purchases. I feel that I should take my business elsewhere. He does not know his customers, and he has neglected his main game.
Whether we like it or now, the newsagency shingle binds all businesses that trade under it. Poor service by one can reflect poorly on all newsagents in the eyes of the customer experiencing poor service.
We are in challenged businesses with some of our core products suffering from severe disruption. Add to this the challenges of the economy, more focused competitors and myriad other factors and you have tough circumstances for many newsagency businesses. Why, therefore, would you treat a long-term customer in this way.
If the story as shared is accurate there is no excuse I can think of. A regular customer offering to spend money for little or no effort is to be respected and served well.
I am sure there are plenty of newsagents who would love Ash Long’s business.
We made such mistakes many times, and learn from these mistakes and create a standard procedure to putaway customer’s paper.
Firstly, the customer request should be clearly documented and appear on duty staff’s tasks list. All the staff should know the storage location of putaway items.
Secondly, the prepayment is required for the putaway.
Last, if anything went wrong, admit the mistake, get the magazine/newsaper at all cost from other newsagents or ebay.
Most of failures came from the breakdown of shop internal communication.
The only big problem in customer service of this incident is the counter staff blamed the owner for the failure.
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Current POS systems are good at transactions, but lack of capacity of internal communication and task management.
i guess they are too busy to remmeber anything. start using order book!
I am always putting papers and mags away for customers while they are away , even mail the papers to them if they are away for awhile and want to keep up with the local new while holidaying . What blows me away is how he spends $250 a week on just papers and magazines what the bloody hell is he buying to spend that much , slight exaggeration I feel .
Thanks Shauns. There is no exaggeration to the $250 purchase figure each week. We buy just about every available Australian-produced magazine to source advertising prospects for our own publication. This is standard industry practice.
We buy everything from weekly and monthly newspapers, to magazines on horses, weddings, caravans, home and gardening, woodwork, stamps, motoring as well as the niche publications. I have the receipts!
Ok Ash Can you please come up to North Qld and I will look after you :).
Yup,
Customer service. It’s not hard.
We do this for a customer that gets a whole lot of interstate papers everyday – but magazines are just as easy.
Automatically charged to account, and labels printed to remind us just in case
A customer came in the other day, and asked about keeping the SMH for 2 saturdays as they were away for holidays.
setup new customer in system
Setup putaway (and start/stop dates), set it to pay on pickup
label is again printed to remind us
customer will arrive back to find papers ready for them.
when stop date is reached the putaway stops automatically.
Again it’s not hard
Newsagency staff are the problem here. Should they be a bit more discreet and not be blaming the boss. Should they not have apologised for inconvenience caused and not attempted to put the blame on someone. This would have inflamed the situation. We can usually obtain back copies too. I can understand if the boss did not know the customer and like us he has been left in the past with papers not picked up past return date. If the customer regularly does not have papers kept they should have been asked to pre -pay. However I think the problem lies with the staff not knowing how to discreetly handle a disgruntled customer,
Carol, we hire them, train them, motivate them, manage them. The staff are not the problem.
Staff appeared to have handle this badly and I would say if they blamed the boss to a customer even if the boss was in the wrong then they showed a lack of tact that has now escalated.
Carol, maybe do. But that would be another point of training / leadership from the owner.
We set the parameters within which our employees operate.
Carol, thanks for your interest in my episode. The ‘boss’ at the newsagency has failed to reply to my written message, or reply to my e-mail. As Mark says, “the staff are not the problem”.
My local agent is so rude and tactless, he has lost me to on-line lotto and news.
I am sure I am not alone.
The agency display is a dogs breakfast and portrays your industry as one of arrogance, as though we MUST deal with with him.
As a shop assiztant of many years -also missing here is the fact that if mr long is such a high volume customer, i would expect that he would be on a first name basis with at least some of the staff. There is a level of differnce between customers & “regular customers”
Is there anything I can do? My newsagent has missed the last seven weeks of weekend deliveries! I ring The Australian customer service line and they are polite but nothing gets done – the next week again there is no paper. This is not the first time I have been though this. Obviously the newsagent is asleep at the wheel.
Andrew have you spoken with the newsagent or only direct with the Australian customer service
Andrew, contact your distribution agent directly. Chances are that News Ltd have sent a cancellation notice to your distributor and have then failed to notify him to restart or to ignore the cancellation.
We often receive cancellations from News Ltd only to be told by a News Ltd rep that this was only an ‘expiry alert’ and not a cancellation. A cancellation is a cancellation, it is a stop. An ‘expiry alert’ is an in-house term used by News Ltd, and has no relevance for any stop/start notices received.
Unless we receive notice to continue/start delivery in writing from News Ltd then we are unable to deliver to a subscription home delivery customer.
Dealing with News Ltd is like pulling teeth from a lion in the wild.
Talk to your distributor, chances are the issue goes back to News Ltd.