>I mean, does the person at the counter really care as to how I was doing?
Why not?
Why is it so remarkable that strangers can care about one another?
I go out of my way to smile and treat people warmly. I value other people, it spreads good emotions, it makes me happy, and yes I do care. If a Starbucks barista responded to my question, "How are you?" by saying he's doing poorly I would be happy to listen to his story and offer myself in some kind of emotional-service capacity.
Cynical people always assume no one else cares about them despite evidence to the contrary. In my opinion this is the "false consensus bias" at work. You assume others are like you, and since you don't care about others, you assume they must not care about you. This is certainly not true in many parts of the world. People do care.
>If a Starbucks barista responded to my question, "How are you?" by saying he's doing poorly I would be happy to listen to his story and offer myself in some kind of emotional-service capacity.
The issue with this is that the relationship is one sided. You cannot be negative to customers as an employee in a professional setting, that is a big no-no as far as customer service goes. Most customer service people have it pounded into them to "leave home life, at home", while inviting on any negativity that "how are you doing" may bring from the customer. You are also under time constraints which you and the customer are usually aware of. If someone really wants to go into the terribly surgery they're recovering from or that they lost their job the other day, you have to cut them short to move on to other customers. No one wants to hear the lonely old mans stories while he holds up the entire line. You will get dinged as an employee for not servicing enough customers if you let this get out of hand.
Additionally "how are you doing?" rarely will get a completely honest answer. It is a ritual for most people. People don't go into the deep personal crises they're having with a barista, cashier or bank teller. Nor does the company they work for really care. You personally may have compassion for the person but even if you heard the actual tragedy in someones life(which some people do go into), you have very little power to affect the situation. I guess you can say "well hope that works out for you", but that doesn't really solve the problem. Worse is when the company you work for is at fault for the problem & the company wants to wash their hands of it while putting all the pressure on you to "smooth things over" with the customer.
I think it's nice to try and be positive, but I also like to be realistic. My beef usually is more with companies who really don't give a shit about the customer, but burden their employees to represent the business as though it really does, meanwhile usually treating the employee like crap as well.
Actually, I honestly think the bias is on your side this time. You're assuming that you're nice and therefore everyone else is nice like you.
I've actually walked into an enterprise (the car rental company) and found one of their cards lying around that details how to start a conversation with a customer.
It goes along the lines of:
<Enthusiastic Greeting>
<Enquire about abc / def / ghi>
and some more non-sense like that that I forget.
Plus, you can judge by someone's tone if they really are being honest or if it's just that they've been doing it so many times, it's become fairly mechanical. In cases like that I think a simple 'Hi', works much better anyway.
But the the thing I was going for with that post was, cultural differences can sometimes throw you off quite a bit, like the original article says.
I think the card that provides "guidelines" for employees is a great way to re-emphasize the point for employees.
It is a genuine struggle for any organization be it small or big is to make your customer facing people greet customers cheerfully. And I think it is never enough to drive home this point and if having a card helps, so be it.
What matters to me as a customer, is somebody cheerful attending to my request at that moment and not someone who just wants to get you out of the way and do something better.
Why not?
Why is it so remarkable that strangers can care about one another?
I go out of my way to smile and treat people warmly. I value other people, it spreads good emotions, it makes me happy, and yes I do care. If a Starbucks barista responded to my question, "How are you?" by saying he's doing poorly I would be happy to listen to his story and offer myself in some kind of emotional-service capacity.
Cynical people always assume no one else cares about them despite evidence to the contrary. In my opinion this is the "false consensus bias" at work. You assume others are like you, and since you don't care about others, you assume they must not care about you. This is certainly not true in many parts of the world. People do care.