Customer Service?

I have been reading, (ok listening thanks to Audible.com) two books about customer service and the ways good companies are run. "The Wal-Mart Way" by Donald Soderquist and "Customer-Mania" by Ken Blanchard, Jim Ballard and Fred Finch. The books are about how Wal-Mart and YUM Brands (KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, A&W and Long John Silver's) create a culture of empowering employees to make the ultimate shopping / eating experience. Each book illustrates the way all of the locations manage their employees and expectations. How they strive to keep the stores clean, well stocked, and full of polite helpful employees. Unfortunately, at my local Wal-Mart shelves are often empty, however the aisles are full of unattended carts of merchandise waiting to be unboxed and go onto the shelves at all hours of the day. The employees are often surley or at best will just ignore you when you need assistance. My KFC often forgets to pack items in the orders, the food is often less than hot, and if you go through the drive-thru you often have to go back into the store to get your order corrected. The staff is in such a hurry to rush you through the drive-thru that they give you your total and order you to pull up to the window before you have finished ordering.

I certainly hope that the policies and procedures these books enumerate will soon trickle down to my local stores. It is more comforting to think that perhaps my little corner of the world has been forgotten by the corpoate trainers and coaches than the local employees are just don't care to be nice to their neighbors.