‘DIY shops are the worst’

An article in the Telegraph by Mary Portas has highlighted her Top 10 worst customer service crimes. Portas has a new series on TV called ‘Secret Shopper’ where she is tackling the service we receive in retail outlets in the UK.

Her top 10 include things such as not keeping enough tills open, cashiers not communicating, signage overload, and being told ‘If it’s not out on the shop floor, we haven’t got it’. But at number 4 she has ‘Assistants who don’t know their stuff’, a major bugbear at DIY Doctor. On that subject Mary Portas also goes on to say that

“DIY shops are the worst. Winding queues, nobody on the floor. Bank Holiday Monday in Homebase? I’d rather stick pins in my eyes. And ears.”

This is precisely how DIY Doctor came about! Ten years ago, www.diydoctor.org.uk was set up by Mike Edwards after another trip to a DIY superstore and yet again being dismayed at how little the staff knew about the products they were selling.

So it would appear that customer service in the DIY stores may not have improved much in the last ten years. What do you think?