Why I Will Never Shop At Woolworths Nairobi And You Probably Shouldn’t Too

First a disclaimer: This post is about bad customer care, but it also has girly clothes talk. If girly clothes talk bores you to tears, please forgive me. Also from the header, it is about an expensive clothes store so if you are in the “be grateful you can afford it many Kenyans can’t” team, please skip the post. 

Let us start with a bit of background. I hate clothes shopping. I really do. See clothes are not like shoes where you can spot what you like from a mile away. Clothes shopping demands that you look at options, go into fitting rooms to fit and sometimes what you like may not like you back, again unlike shoes shopping.

So anyway, I have for a while needed a crisp white shirt  to add to my other two white shirts that are pretty but are not cotton and therefore not crisp by definition. I asked around, I tweeted the question and all answers pointed to Woolworths as the best place to get a crisp white shirt. It is also an open secret among the ladies that Woolworths sells the best bras and women underwear generally. Their underwear is great quality but also pretty. I had two reasons to visit Woolworths.

Last Friday on my way to a class I teach I decided to pass by Woolworths Yaya to get this clothes shopping thing out of the way. I had just 1 hour to spare, I figured it would be sufficient. My struggles started right when I walked into the store. See how some expensive clothes shops have attendants who follow you around suspiciously like they’re afraid you will steal? Well, Woolworths was exactly opposite. There was no attendant in sight. I walked around for a minute or two, then I spotted the white shirts. My next challenge was to find an attendant to help me pick out a shirt to try. I abandoned the shirts and went to the cashier’s desk where one lady was serving a couple of customers…

Me: Excuse me please, I need some help picking out a shirt
She looks me up and down like we see clothes stores assistants do in the movies, I guess sizing me up to see if I’m a buyer or a browser.
Her: Wait for a minute.
She finishes serving the customer then calls out her colleague who was chatting with others behind the partition. Her colleague comes to help, and to her credit, she is really friendly. She gets me a size 8 shirt, but she seems in a hurry, I guess to go back to her chit chat since the store is not busy. As she is doing that, I spot some nice capri pants…

Me: Can I try a pair of this too?
Her: We do not have that in your size.
Me: Do you have pencil skirts?
Her: We do but none in your size.
Me: Do you have other colour shirts?
Her: No
Me: I would also like some bras, can we go across the store and pick them out so I fit everything?
Her: Fit the shirt first, you will be assisted with the bras on the other side of the store.

Okiedok! Off to the fitting rooms I go and by good luck, the shirt fits alright. I get out of the fitting rooms hoping to find the lady waiting to  help if the shirt doesn’t fit and she’s disappeared back to her chatting station so I make my way to the underwear section. There’s no assistant in sight so I browse as I look around. I spot one lady, call out for assistance and she tells me; “Let me get you someone to assist” and she goes to this supremely attractive chatting station at the back, and in a minute or so another lady comes. We agree to measure my chest, and as she quickly does so I ask her if the bra I am wearing which is padded won’t affect the measurements…

Her: It will, but you will fit a couple we see what fits.

I thought the point of using a tape measure is so that I don’t have to try on different sizes but I decide to be a good sport. After we measure she picks out a couple of A and B cup bras in my size and sends me off to try them. She was a bit better than her colleague because when I come back from trying them on she is still there and she then helps me pick out the pairs I want, but as soon as I move on to the panties, she is gone. Customers do not need help picking out panties evidently.

By this time I am slightly irritated but also befuddled by the mystery of disappearing assistants and I have about 15 minutes left on my 1 hour so I decide to finish my shopping trip. At the cashier’s, they now had two cashiers and two assistants, but there was a queue of 3 customers which seemed to take a bit long. I discover why when it is my turn. Their debit/credit card (PDQ) machine seemed to have connecting issues. Would it have been too much to ask to inform the queuing customers of this fact so they understand why service is slow?

As the frustrated cashier is trying to get my payment done, a lady walks up and asks for an item I presume she wanted but had been out of stock previously. I only catch part of the conversation…

Shopping assistant: Sorry, we don’t have it (the item) yet.
Lady: But you told me to come back today…
Assistant: I’m sorry. It has arrived in our warehouse and it is in the system but it is not in the store yet.
I am here thinking, that is an accurate answer, but it is bound to annoy a customer who came all the way on your instruction, and it does.
Lady: (getting irritated) So why did you tell me to come today? Can I come back later in the day?
Assistant: Sorry, the item is in the system but not in the store, may be you check tomorrow.
Lady who is looking visibly irritated leaves.

There is little the shopping assistant could have done about the item’s availability in the store, but I felt she could have served the lady better. She could have asked for the lady’s phone number with a promise to call her once the item arrived. She could have explained to her supervisor that they have failed the lady, and asked if it could be possible for the lady to pay for the item, then have it couriered to her once it arrived. Driving to a store several times is a waste of time, and we know malls charge parking, a courier fee would be an insignificant cost. She did not do any of those things, she asked the customer to come back a second time.

I love my white shirt, I love the new underwear, but I am never going back to Woolworths Nairobi.
I have shopped in Woolworths Johannesburg and the experience there was so different and efficient despite the fact that the South African store had so many more customers. As soon as I walked in someone greeted me, asked me what I was looking for, helped me find it, gave me a cart for my stuff and even when I needed to move to a different section, there was always a couple of shopping assistants ready to help. It may not have been super friendly, but it was highly efficient. The Nairobi stores are nothing like that. This particular experience made me wish for those stores where the assistant follows you as if they think you will steal.

The sad bit is that from my twitter chat about this experience, my experience is not unique.
By the time I was done, a shopping trip that should have taken 30 minutes max took over 1 hour and I was running late so I didn’t have the time to look for a management team member to highlight the poor service, though I wondered if that would help since management didn’t seem to notice that their staff members were at back of house chatting most of the time.