How grocery stores should respond to customer comments

Hi,

Here's a piece http://www.wbez.org/blog/mark-bazer/2012-02-10/thanks-feedback-how-grocery-stores-should-respond-customer-comments-96266 I wrote about grocery story (Whole Foods, in particular) comment boards I thought you might appreciate.

This Friday (Feb. 17) at 6:30 p.m., Doug Sohn of Hot Doug's and Martha Bayne of Soup & Bread join me on The Interview Show at The Hideout. More info at http://www.hideoutchicago.com.

Thanks for taking a look.

Mark

I quite enjoyed that. However, in real life, we in the perishables industry are much snarkier. The WF comment cards you chose are just a soupcon of the rabid, toxic, self-entitled psychotics(see: customers) we placate on a daily basis.

Okay clever Mark. I love the part about the guy opening a bag of chips so the customer could taste. But I do not see anything wrong with customer feedback. True some is going to be crazy or impractical and you will always have wacky people that will complain about everything. I once did complain to the customer service desk at Whole Foods about the tofu eggless salad which I do like on occasion. It was day glo yellow and it tasted like someone dumped in a half a jar of tumeric. It seems as the management should know about these things so they can keep quality control. I have a friend that routinely returns items to food stores after opening and eating part of them if she does not like them. I witnessed this at Trader Joes. She took back bacon after eating a few slices and told them she did not care for it and it was not good. She did not say spoiled. They took it back and credited her for it. Of course they dump it in the garbage. I do not take things back to stores after buying them unless its something that was moldy or spoiled.

mebazer wrote:Here's a piece http://www.wbez.org/blog/mark-bazer/2012-02-10/thanks-feedback-how-grocery-stores-should-respond-customer-comments-96266 I wrote about grocery story (Whole Foods, in particular) comment boards I thought you might appreciate.

I did! Thanks.

I used to love the comment cards & responses at Whole Foods. My complaint these days? At the WF on Halsted, they're located in an out of the way place & I have to actually take a detour to read them. And who wants to look like a person who actually goes out of her way to read the comment cards? Could you please relocate them to a spot that's located on my route through the store?

(Ahem...yes, this is written with tongue firmly planted in cheek.)

Hi- I occasionally read the comment cards that are located in the seating area of the downtown Evanston WF, and they leave the same ones up forever. A few years ago, I put a suggestion in the box that the dairy department needed to do a better job of rotating their milk. It took at least two submissions before the problem got resolved. I would go there to buy Oberweis milk, and sometimes the milk would be ready to expire, or had already expired.

Most of the suggestions seem to fall into two categories. The first category is can you please carry some product that they love, and the second category is why did you quit carrying something you used to carry in the how/salad bar?

Hope this helps, Nancy