A regular Sainsbury’s customer complained to us that he had been ignored at the deli counter.  Three members of staff chatted amongst themselves, none of them willing to serve the sole customer at their counter.  He asked “Anybody bothering to serve?” and got the response from one employee “Not if you talk to me like that?”

Many of us will have seen the signs across a broad range of businesses demanding that the customer respect their employees.  Without question utellus supports this position.  However as with all demands for respect, there also comes responsibility.  Members of staff have a responsibility to do their job to the best of their ability, and must be prepared to accept criticism when they fall below the standards that the typical consumer requires.  Likewise customers have the right to be treated with respect, not contempt.

We asked Sainsbury’s if they would like to comment and they told us: “We expect our colleagues to serve customers politely and efficiently at all times.  We welcome feedback from our customers and would encourage them in the future to report bad service (and indeed very good service) to a member of the store's management team.”

Hiding behind rights, and ignoring responsibilities will have only one outcome, particularly in a recession.  All customer facing businesses need to face up to the challenges ahead, and ensure that their staff are best prepared to deal with them.

We live in very interesting times.  A significant proportion of younger customer facing personnel, such as retail assistants, bank cashiers and leisure staff have probably never known a recession.  Those that have come into employment in the last ten years have only been exposed to a period of unprecedented growth, and consumers only too happy to part with their money. 

Over the next few weeks, utellus will be running a series of articles based on our customers issues in a number of industries and asks – how will companies respond to competing for the consumers’ decreasing disposable income; indeed do they even recognise that they need to do so?

Tamba, the twins and multiple births association, has asked utellus to lend its weight to the issue of supermarket trolleys.  Tamba Chief Executive Keith Reed explains "Many members have reported a lack of shopping trolleys that accommodates their family size at supermarkets across the UK.  Unfortunately, this has often resulted in them cancelling their shopping trip.  Clearly this is both inconvenient and unfair for the families concerned."

Tamba has asked each chain to explain:

• Their policy on the number of shopping trolleys each store should have for multiple birth families with children in the new born, toddler and early years age brackets.
• What additional assistance your stores might be able to offer to these families to make their shopping experience more enjoyable. 
• How many of these trolleys you have at each store and where they can be located.

Tamba wants to promote this infomation for its members, as Keith Reed says "We propose making this information publicly available via our website.  As you can appreciate, this information will be useful to multiple birth families and larger families more generally and therefore I look forward to hearing from them."

If this issue has affected you, then Tamba would love to hear from you.  You can lodge your comments either with Tamba directly or by filling in our TAMBA survey.

For quite a while, I've wondered about the big machine in the entrance of my local Sainsburys.  It looks pretty impressive, and is called Coinstar with a big slogan on it "Turn your coins into cash".  This is the thing that puzzles me - my coins are cash; I regularly use them to buy things, and no one complains.  I also regularly get coins given to me as 'change', and I don't have an issue with it.  Should I be worried?

Coinstar want me to take the £10 (or whatever) of spare change that sits on my sidetable and put it in their machine.  They'll count it for me, confirm that "yes, it's £10" and then give me a voucher for £9.21 - the other 79p was their charge for counting it for me - which I then have to take to the customer service desk to cash for ... coins! 

So here are my options:

1. Count the change myself and then spend it
2. Put the change in a machine, which will then count it at a cost of 7.9%, then receive a voucher which I take to a desk to receive cash.

I know what I would do.

It's just over a year since utellus started to revolutionise customer service.  We've spoken with senior management in some of the UK's biggest companies and attracted the attention of partners around the world.  In that time we've processed a lot of feedback, seen some very satisfied consumers, some focussed companies and learned a lot.  We've taken care to listen to what our users and the companies to whom they have sent feedback, have told us, and today utellus launches its enhanced service. So, what improvements did you tell us you wanted to see?

• Consumers and companies alike remain suspicious of email, and worry that sensitive information might go astray
• Different companies require different information in order to investigate and report back on feedback
• Consumers want to see a response tailored to them - "email response #5" simply isn't good enough

And what have we done?

• We now provide a secure internet portal through which all companies can respond to feedback.  Email is now only used to let you know that there is an update to your feedback - no information is sent in this way.  Added to this, there's no longer scope for the "we didn't get your email" excuse which consumers hear from companies far too often
• Whilst we will still provide a standard feedback form for every company on our database, each company can contact us to request specific information.  This might be required to satisfy their own Data Protection requirements, or simply to facilitate a quick response
• Customer-specific information will help companies to better address your concerns - some will still do a poor job, but experience shows that they'll be the ones to lose customers.  We will, however, provide the tools to help them do a better job

And the best news of all? It's always free for the consumer. And our basic service is free for the company.  There's no excuse for not signing up, no excuse for ignoring customers' needs.  What are you waiting for? 

Companies looking to learn more should click here.

Many people will know that 2007 was the year of the Rugby World Cup in France.  Thousands of fans bought tickets for the many matches stages across France, Wales and Scotland.  Not surprisingly, with the competition on our doorstep, a huge number of these fans were Scottish, English and Welsh.

One of our directors bought two Team Packs from the official distributor, Ticketmaster, which entitled him to a pair of tickets for each of Wales’ pool games, plus the right to 1/4 final and 1/2 final tickets should Wales progress that far.

The process was simple - Ticketmaster charged for all tickets, including the knockout stages, and promised that “if the team chosen for the Team Pack did not qualify for the quarter- and/or semi finals, the price of the corresponding ticket(s) would be fully reimbursed within six weeks of the Rugby World Cup Final.”  The final was held on 20th October, so six weeks took us to 1 December.

On 1 December he received an email from Ticketmaster which said “Due to some administrative delays from the Organising Committee, there has been a slight delay to the processing of refunds.  We are aiming to have all refunds processed by 15 December.”

On 15 December he received another email:  “We have experienced further delays subsequently preventing us being able to issue your refunds by the previously stated 15 December. We expect to be in a position to refund you shortly, we will contact you as soon as we have completed the refund procedure.”

utellus wonders - where has the money gone, how many fans are affected, and what is happening to the interest on the tens of thousands of pounds owed to those loyal individuals?