Service industry failing in service

Last July, syndicated columnist Ann Coulter actually decried low unemployment rates, relating in a half-joking way it had become so easy to get a job, managers at lower-paying retail and service outlets were left to hire the worst employees, many of them teens with their heads in the clouds. \nCoulter protested: "(W)hile trying to buy a tasty Whopper at a Manhattan Burger King, I was in a rush and there were only five customers in line, but more than a half-dozen visible employees. After waiting for a few minutes with absolutely no reduction in the line, however, it became apparent that only one employee was actually doing what he gets paid to do. Two employees were eating, and four were standing in a circle behind the counter chatting with one another as the line continued to grow."\nCoulter's experience sounds eerily like many of mine in the past few months. Local restaurants and retail outlets have a quality crisis on their hands, and now there are signs this is a nationwide problem. Business is just not taking customer service seriously enough. \nIt's a story reverberating across the United States. In a report from the Dallas Morning News (Jan. 29), Angela Shah and Vikas Bajaj reported on the American Customer Satisfaction Index, a quarterly survey conducted by the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor: "(E)conomists began watching customer satisfaction levels in 1994. The past six years have showed a mixed result. As the nation's economy settled into its now record-breaking session, the survey reported, service suffered." \nShah and Bajaj noted that complaints had shot up: "The Council of Better Business Bureaus said it processed more than three million complaints in 1999, about a 10 percent increase from 1998 and about two and a half times the number in 1995."\nAnd it's not just B.K., Reuters' Patrick Markey reported on the ACSI's latest shock finding: McDonald's, long the industry trailblazer in customer service, might be clowning around too much.\nMarkey writes: "Ronald McDonald is flipping plenty of burgers -- but it seems he's just not doing it fast enough or politely enough. The fast food giant McDonald's Corporation was among the poorest performers in a report released on national customer satisfaction. According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, McDonald's score dropped 3.3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2000 from the year-earlier period, only getting a rating of 59 out of a possible 100. That is more than 10 points lower than the (food service) industry average."\nThis doesn't surprise me given my local experiences. The food at McDonald's doesn't taste as good as it used to, since they changed production methods. Some of the stores also seem too slow when taking orders, repairing broken doors and stocking supplies.\nOne reason for complaints is that as the economy grows stronger, the number of times we all dine out, dry clean, fly to ski trips and take cabs also shoot up. But another reason for complaints is low unemployment and poor management.\nShah and Bajaj note Texas hit a record low unemployment rate of 3.7 percent in 2000, making employees a hard thing to find and making quality employees an even more valuable asset. \nIn Indiana, the unemployment rate is even lower, at 2.7 percent. And in Monroe County, where students help boost the pool of employees, the unemployment rate is a negligible 1.4 percent, the lowest in Indiana, according to Indiana's Department of Workforce Development.\nSo what's the problem? And shouldn't students looking for work drive up the unemployment rate? Perhaps, but Bloomington is also flooded with service and retail jobs because of the student population. And lately, many retailers and restaurants have been hard-pressed to find workers.\nBut unlike Coulter and others, I hesitate to come down hardest on the employees -- or lack thereof. Service employees are the lowest paid and possess the least training -- and now that lack of training is alarming the retail industry and its stockholders. The retail association is already working to train its new employees better. But will they reward top employees to decrease turnover?\nIf service at retailers and restaurants can drag both here and nationwide, it must be the top management. It's time for those managers to pay attention to the lowest level of operations -- where the cash changes hands.\nIn high school, I got my first job as a cook for McDonald's -- which, at the time, heavily stressed QSC (Quality, Service, Cleanliness). Around then, I remember reading a rather unflattering media account of founder Ray Kroc. One day, he walked into one of his thousands of stores and got. Angry when he found a cigarette butt on the floor. The article seemed to ridicule him for his micro-management. If only consumers in line could have just a little more of that concern and attitude today.