Customer service and shopping

Expectations have risen a lot. Customers now take it for granted that staff will greet them, know the products properly and exchange a faulty item without an argument. In Vietnam people also expect speed, so a phone shop that makes you wait half an hour for a screen protector will hear about it in an online review that evening. What customers don't want, interestingly, is to be followed around the shop, which used to be common and now just feels like pressure. For businesses, good service matters because it's one of the few things a competitor can't copy overnight. Two pharmacies on the same street sell identical medicine at nearly identical prices, so the one whose pharmacist remembers your mother's prescription wins your loyalty. It's also far cheaper to keep an existing customer than to advertise for a new one. I'd add a caveat, though: service can't rescue a bad product. A smile doesn't compensate for shoes that fall apart in a month, and some chains over-train their staff into reciting scripts that nobody believes. As for online shopping replacing shop assistants, I think it will thin them out rather than wipe them out. For standard goods like phone chargers or detergent, a website does the job perfectly well. But for anything that needs to fit, or anything expensive, people still want a human who can answer an awkward question. The assistants who remain will probably be fewer, better paid and more like advisers.