Cus­tomer Service

Due to frus­tra­tion with cus­tomer ser­vice in a num­ber of  es­tab­lish­ments in Lich­field, it has been de­cided to carry out a sur­vey on Lichfield’s traders.

1. Nat-West Bank: – Their are seven cash­ier and to re­cep­tion po­s­i­tions apart from the “back of­fice” staff within the bank. On Monday there was a queue of ap­prox­im­ately sev­en­teen cus­tom­ers; how­ever there was only two cashiers and one re­cep­tion­ist avail­able. This res­ul­ted in a wait­ing time of fif­teen minutes on av­er­age. This is more the norm than the ex­cep­tion; re­cently cus­tom­ers have waited up to twenty minutes.
2. Boots the Chem­ist: – Boots are the only dis­pens­ing phar­macy within the city centre, yet they close their phar­macy dur­ing the lunch time. It is hoped that cus­tom­ers will vote with their feet and util­ise other fa­cil­it­ies such as Tesco, Waitrose etc.
3. Tesco Pet­rol Sta­tion: – The staff be­lieve that it is ac­cept­able to carry on with con­ver­sa­tions with col­leagues whilst serving customers.
4. Waitrose check­out: – Al­though the staff at Waitrose are fant­astic, senior man­age­ment do not ap­pre­ci­ate the value in cus­tomer ser­vice at the check outs. Suf­fi­cient staff is not provided to al­low the ap­pro­pri­ate num­ber of check outs to open when busi­ness levels are high.
5. W H Smith in­clud­ing the Post Of­fice: – Des­pite the clos­ure of the main Post Of­fice and a num­ber of local Post Of­fices in the Lich­field, the num­ber of cashiers is six, res­ult­ing in long queues and con­sequently long waits. W H Smith be­lieve that this level of cus­tomer ser­vice is ac­cept­able to the public.

Nat-West Up­date: 24th September

Nat-West are ex­per­i­en­cing a high turnover of man­agers and a num­ber of staff have left for vari­ous reas­ons, but have not been replaced.

There has been a con­sid­er­able num­ber of com­plaints from customers.

The situ­ation is not likely to im­prove in the near future!

Per­haps you will com­ment on the ser­vice levels at these and other traders, (good or bad)?

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