Customer service at Whole Foods

[Anonymous]

Has customer service gotten worse, at all whole foods? Is this a new generation of customer service workers who don't know what customer service is --look at the customer when they come to the 'customer service' counter you may be busy tallying up whatever you are doing on that clipboard or say I'll be with you in a minute, workers blocking entire aisles stocking or removing inventory with items in a shopping cart not bothering to move for customers they clearly see and chitchatting blocking customers who are trying to exit. etc. This experience was at one particular WF store but maybe it's the overall business and the customer service business in general that no longer matches the service of the yesteryears. Perhaps it's time to go back to curbside pickup?

[Anonymous]

It has nothing to do with the workers and everything to do with Amazon owning WF. The workers are tiny little cogs in a much larger system - it’s ridiculous to blame them and not the system.

[Anonymous]

It sucks at every single store even the "high end" ones.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It sucks at every single store even the "high end" ones.

This. But this is not at all new, I stopped shopping there after amazon took over and cs went to____.

[Anonymous]

It's the generation of workers, especially the demographic that would work stocking shelves, putting together online orders.

[Anonymous]

It started sucking a long time ago, after Bezos bought it.

[Anonymous]

The CS at the WF in Columbia is great

[Anonymous]

The one in Falls Church has gotten progressively worse. Lackadaisical at best.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's the generation of workers, especially the demographic that would work stocking shelves, putting together online orders.

This. It has nothing to do with WF. This is true at all the big box hardware stores. They could care less if you need something and are trying to find the right item. Target and Lowes have the worst employees who could care less about their customers. Home Goods employees also do this a lot. Sometimes they will get in your way if they think you are shoplifting. They will also send someone to walk buy you, buzzing you, as close as possible. If any store does this to me, I leave my cart and refuse to buy anything. These stores clearly don't need my money. I refuse to shop at Lowes because of how horrible they are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's the generation of workers, especially the demographic that would work stocking shelves, putting together online orders.

It's typically late 30s-50s working in WF not young folks.

[Anonymous]

I was at the one in Pentagon City a couple of weeks ago and it was so packed with workers shopping the aisles for online orders that you couldn't get around the store.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The CS at the WF in Columbia is great

The ones in Rockville and Gaithersburg are great too, but awful at the river road Bethesda and all the ones in dc I’ve been to. I see the same pattern at Starbucks and mid level restaurants.

[Anonymous]

Everything Amazon touches they ruin. Amazon ruined everything. The end.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Everything Amazon touches they ruin. Amazon ruined everything. The end.

Then how do you explain the same phenomenon everywhere? At any supermarket? I swear the local Giant is staffed by only four people in the entire store and the customer service desk is always grumpy or empty. My local Whole Foods is fine but all stores do have fewer staff than they did in the past.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Everything Amazon touches they ruin. Amazon ruined everything. The end.

Then how do you explain the same phenomenon everywhere? At any supermarket? I swear the local Giant is staffed by only four people in the entire store and the customer service desk is always grumpy or empty. My local Whole Foods is fine but all stores do have fewer staff than they did in the past.

The people who work there don't decide how many people to staff. When people are overworked they get grumpy. All stores are competing with Amazon now and so it is a race to the bottom.