Camera Store - The Hell of Retail

Not THAT Again...

So an old-ish customer comes in, saying he wants to get prints from the digital files on a CD. I tell him to go on over to our kiosk and follow the instructions (I was busy). He gets to the kiosk, looks at it for a second (clearly the "Press here to start" was not clear enough), turns to face me, palms turned outwards, and says with a small level of outrage: "But I've never done this before!".

If you've read my post about The Thing I Hate The Most... you know this is it. Dude, the computer will ask you for some information, one thing at a time, and give you some obvious choices. Give it a chance.

I came up with a nice analogy. Say you're applying for a credit card, or for financing, or for a membership card at a store, or for a job, or maybe you're doing something tax-related, or maybe filling out a survey or helping out with a Psychology study by answering some questions. In any of these situations, you have to fill out a form, probably one you've never seen before. All that this form does is ask you for one or two pieces of information at a time, followed by a space or check-box in which to enter this information. Not too hard. What if you said "But I've never filled out this form before!" when it's handed to you. The person handing it to you will look at you like you're retarded, quite rightfully. So why do I have to be all caring and empathetic to a customer who looks at an extremely simple sequence of button-presses (each of which asks for one or two pieces of information and makes your choices clear) and tells me that I should help him cuz he's never done it before?

posted by Remus