I am studying Business & Marketing Communication in IED university in Barcelona.
As part of my course, I am preparing a marketing plan based around customer service recieved in Spain, in particular Barcelona and what steps I can take to set about changing it.
It seems everyone has a story to tell of the service they have received in Supermarkets,Restaurants,Bars and Nightclubs around the city (and the rest of Spain) and I would like to hear yours good or bad
Look forward to hearing from you
Janine
I find the people who work in the shops in Barcelona 90% of the time would prefer it if you didn't want to buy something thank you very much! Because they want to keep chatting to their friends who are working in the shop or on the phone to their boyfriends.
ReplyDeleteAlso people seem to take much longer to get back to you here, compared to the UK, it is acceptable to take a week whereas in the UK you would get an answer the same day.
Don´t get me started on the customer service in Barcelona I TELLS YOU! I´ve had it all from the waiter or barman through to the hospital and the fireman...Once I tried to pay at a cafe, waiting while the guy at the counter served anyone but me, only to get so frustrated I left, no one stopped me and I got a free lunch... figure that was a win for the customer. My friends visited from Australia and we had a running joke, if you want service... look away. When your in a panic at the hospital, there are 100 people in the que and one nurse serving, while another 5 nurses are chatting, clearly the meaning of emergency health care is lost while you bring yourself to tears waiting to be served...Being saved by the fireman from a broken lift, having been trapped for almost an hour, only to be yelled at by your saviours, rather than being asked, ´are you okay?´it seems in Barcelona, the customer is seldom right, moreso wrong. The opposite to most cities in the world....
ReplyDeleteI'm living in Barcelona since 2 years and i can easily say that the costumer service is pretty bad, obviously if you go to expensive clubs or restaurants the service will be good but in all the other mass shops,restaurants,bars (where we can say there are more costumer daily compare to expensive ones) the costumer service I noticed that is preety bad : in bars you wait to much and sometimes the people who works there is not even polite in respect of the costumer.
ReplyDeleteBut is not always true, in other shop i found the costumer service very good and able to give help to the costumers. So i think that the problem of some shops,restaurant or bars ect. is that they don't concerne too much on build up a good costumer service that is near the costumer and listen to him. This is an understandable problem in this times of "buying always more" after The Globalisation Era.
Business of every kind should always remember the more important part in doing business : The Costumer.
Few years ago,I went to a japanese restaurant in Gracia (Barcelona). The room was not that full at all and we orderded quite fast. 4 of us have been served after a decent amount of time,while the last one was being kept in the dark at the food level...
ReplyDeleteAfter 20 minutes, my friend just asked to the waiter if his order had been forgotten. He said this in english because he cannot speak spanish. The response of the waiter was swift and agressive:"Here, you speak spanish, not english! and I don´t know anythng about any food!".....
Talk about customer service huh!
Steps to fix it: hire respectful people.
ReplyDelete(Hint: you won't find much of them in Spain)
It's hard to generalise. Many small shops run by the family who owns it are very friendly. Mid-sized businesses such as night clubs and restaurants are the worst, because they are often understaffed, and workers are burnt out.
ReplyDeleteI have lived in both Malaga and London.If you dont talk the countries mother tongue how the hall do you expect to get good service.Most Brits go into Spanish Restaurants and shops and demand they speak english,why should they.No-one in London speaks Spanish so to get a proper service they need to speak English.Good service is only as good as the customer when it comes to a language barrier.
ReplyDeleteCustomer service doesnt exsist in spain. As long as the señora from El Corte Inglés that has been with the company the whole of her career is being paid she doesnt care if the customer is satisfied. Take it or leave it attitude. The only people who you will give good costomer service is the small companies that are proud of what they sell, like some markets and independant business´ which depend on their sale of poroducts
ReplyDeleteoh my god i could tell you millions of stories but they will all be the same as the rest!
ReplyDeleteso briefly...
the other day i went to the Champanyeria with some friends, a damn packed place its gotta be said, but wot do you expect with those amazing prices, of course you're gonna get a load of people, so we're waiting n waiting to get served, we get to the front, we wait patiently, and we see that the guy isnt serving anyone, so we ask him 'can we get served?' in a polite manner as most europeans do apart from the spanish, and he replies straight 'NO YOU CANT SO YOU CAN EITHER WAIT OR GO ELSEWHERE' are you serious?! we quite obviously went elsewhere...
i have a solution to this problem of bar/cafes/restaurants/clubs:
get cooking lessons and cook amazing meals at home and bring your friends round, also get loadsa cheap beers/drinks from the supermercado and invite loadsa friends round and have a houseparty. And there you have it... no need to be subjected to this rudeness!
The phrase 'The customer is always right' has been lost here in Spain along with all customer-focused service due to employee behaviour and their response to customer issues, its a total embarrassment. Also these problems are often simply just annoying but not enough to drive us away entirely, yet many are simply too much to take.
Another solution is to simply pose the little question to the employee: 'Could I have your Complaints Form please' : 'Me puedes pasar su hoja de reclamacion/quejas por favor?' WATCH THEM POO IN THEIR PANTIES!!!
ok, i've finished my rant now, hope that helps janine! cya x
I don't want to generalise to much but I would say a lot of times the service in Barcelona is not that great compare to other cities I've been to. Often it's very slow, no matter how many people that are waiting in line and sometimes you also get treated pretty rude. I know that I thought to myself a million times, how hard can it be to smile towards your customers??
ReplyDeleteGood luck Janine!
Think everybody above me as summed everything up really but i'll add my 10 bobs worth. I've just arrived from the UK where i spent Xmas with family, and because Sainsbury's and Tesco are close that is where i did most of my food shopping. The difference is obvious, the second you walk through the door, your greeted as if they mean it even though they might be suffering inside for what ever reason (customer service) Helping you find things is never a problem and they even ask you whether you would like help with your bags, pretty normal behaviour for us lot sure you'd agree. This type of service is the norm and stretches across a range of businesses with the odd exceptions thrown in for good measure.
ReplyDeleteIn Spain, ohhhhh noooo. Exceptions have been noted, small businesses do offer a polite service or in places like Galicia where i must say the locals where great. but as a whole it's shameful the way they do business here. The Ladies in Dia below me obviously hate their job's and insist on scanning my items, literally throwing them down the other end and when their done use that huge plank of wood to scoop all the items to one side to form a mini mountain of food, eggs and all included, and this is one example of many. I suspect this behaviour is associated to most of the bigger businesses in larger cities where the employees don't care as the locals accept this as the norm and are often worse than the people serving them. The whole country needs to be reminded who pays their wages as obviously it isn't you or me?
Hi,
ReplyDeleteMy husband bought me a Hewlett Packard mini laptop in February last year in Barcelona, unfortunately he didnt go to PC City, he went to a smaller shop as was local and we are supposed to support the local community! The computer went wrong in May and I am still wrangling with HP support for them to pick it up 8 months later, my warranty runs out this Feb so am at the end of my tether and all they do is put me on hold with the worst music EVER!!!! Am so annoyed, they haven't heard of Customer service. Think its a swear word here!
You should try living in Andalucia!
ReplyDeleteBarcelona sounds years ahead of us down here.
Customer service is non existent no matter what business it is. "Can't be arsed" would be a better name for Spanish Customer Service.
The only exception I've found to this is El Corte Ingles where you might not like the answer but at least they try.