A tree is known by its fruit; a man by his deeds. A good deed is never lost; he who sows courtesy reaps friendship, and he who plants kindness gathers love.
― Saint Basil
It is a big relief to walk into a big store and have someone help you out with your shopping. This is especially true when you are shopping for expensive products, or products you don't fully understand yourself. To help you shop for value and with guaranteed satisfaction is the prime role and responsibility of a courtesy clerk.
A courtesy clerk is a person in a shopping mall or a supermarket whose basic task is to put the groceries of the shoppers in shopping bags and then back to the shopping cart. However, with growing number of products and shops aimed at serving the customer with the best quality, the job description of a courtesy clerk has seen an extension. If you are looking at hiring a few resources for this job, given below are the roles and responsibilities that you will have to train them for.
Duties of a Courtesy Clerk
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Courteous Approach
As the name suggests, a courtesy clerk has to be courteous to your customers. Greeting customers with pleasantries irrespective of the time is an important part of setting a good work environment. Answering the customers with politeness despite their show of vexation is of extreme importance. A courtesy clerk must understand the needs of the customers and their situations well enough to serve them with absolute justice. Any show of discourteous behavior can earn the business a bad name. A shop earns its regular customers only when it understands them, remembers them, and treats them with the respect they themselves intend to earn.
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Adequate Knowledge
How many times have you walked into a supermarket, only to find out that their customer service is as ill-equipped as you are with regard to the information about the products? Well, we all have had these annoying experiences, when the visit to the store adds no value to the shopping experience. The role of a courtesy clerk extends to customer service as well. Your employee must have adequate knowledge about the products on sale, and if they are not in stock, he/she must be able to tell what is the next best solution. The responsibility to make shopping a worthwhile experience lies with your courtesy clerk. Thus, education of your store functioning, its inventory, and its value system must be clearly understood by the courtesy clerk.
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Clear Communication
Despite being well-educated about the shop, if your courtesy clerk cannot communicate the service to the customer, your business will never reach the set standard. Language barrier, poor vocabulary, overuse of slang, and casual attitude towards the customer's needs are some of the underlying reasons for barriers in communication. Thus, training your staff to speak respectfully, correctly, and in a way that properly answers the customer's questions is important. A clear communication is only possible when your courtesy clerk answers or helps the customer shop to satisfy the latter's needs completely.
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Functioning with Common Sense
Clear communication laced with common sense is the key for making any business truly efficient. In an act of selling, it is not always important to sell something that is expensive to improve sales. It is in fact much more important that the sale is made keeping in mind the background of the customer and the need. This may mean that one has to sell something of a lesser value. However, this honesty of satisfactorily serving the customer alone is going to win him over and over again. Common sense in the job description of a courtesy clerk translates into how a simple rapport can earn the shop or the business a long-term customer.
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Well-groomed Presentation
Apart from the things mentioned above, it is crucial for the courtesy clerk to maintain a well-groomed look at all times. Clean appearances devoid of gaudy makeup and unkempt clothes make one look far more approachable to the customers. Also, it is easier to trust a person to look presentable as compared to one who cannot even take care of one's own maintenance.
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Good Work Ethics
The person concerned takes up the responsibility of setting up a good work ethic within the work premise. Taking up roles of a team player, a leader, and a guide as and when the situation demands is what is required in this job. The biggest responsibility of a courtesy clerk is to maintain the customer base by providing top-quality service.
Other than the roles and responsibilities mentioned above, he/she will be asked to take a stock of inventory, restock the shelves, replace the returned products, and may be, at times, look at the job of a cashier in his absence too. Although the job of a courtesy clerk does not demand any specific educational qualifications, it surely demands sincerity, diligence, and willingness to learn in a workplace.
