Small Talk and Customer Service

For the most part, I consider myself to be a fairly good sales assistant; at least from the customer's point of view. That is, of course, assuming that this hypothetical customer is anything like myself, which, admittedly, is rather doubtful seeing as if he was then he'd be much more likely to shop online thereby cutting out the whole bloody "customer service" experience altogether. Nevertheless, for the sake of argument, we shall just have to pretend that although this imaginary customer is like myself, he doesn't have access to the internet and thus, regrettably, has no choice but to do his shopping in shops. But that's okay because although I will smile and say hello, which is more than can be expected from half of the sales assistants I've come across, I won't hassle him, which, coincidentally, is more than can be expected from the other half of the sales assistants I've come across. To me, this is good customer service; friendly but not overbearing. Having said that, I am the first to admit that I could afford to be slightly more conversational with customers and so I have made a concerted effort in recent weeks to improve my small talk, no matter how painful the process.

In reality, this simply means that I have occasionally been asking unwitting customers how they are... as well as how much they owe me. The response is almost always predictable. Either they give a short answer as if to warn me that they don't care for small talk, which is absolutely fine as far as I'm concerned, or they proceed to regale me with tales of the trivialities of their daily lives, which is also fine on account of the fact that very little reciprocation is required. However, problems can soon occur when the response isn't predictable. For instance, on one such occasion, I decided to ask one of the regular customers how his day had been. He looked me in the face and, with his characteristically deep grumble, replied, "Everything's shit". Assuming that this comment was to be taken in jest (because it was funny), I laughed and jokingly said that I knew how he felt. It was at that point that he dropped the bombshell. Under his breath, but loud enough to be clear, the customer remarked, "My wife died two weeks ago". Fortunately, I managed to offer my condolences before the painstaking silence descended upon us. Unfortunately, he was buying four photo frames, each of which needed to be individually wrapped. Largely as a result of this horribly awkward experience, I cannot help feel that my attempts to improve my customer service have become somewhat jaded. Indeed, rather than providing any form of inspiration or enlightenment, the results have done little more than to reaffirm my faith in simply smiling and saying hello.