Something I learned during my years working in retail was that some companies pay their sales people commission. In regular retail. Not used car sales, which one would expect, but in regular stores. They do so in an effort to improve customer service by using commission as an incentive to spur employees to respond better to customers. This is a mindset that makes no sense to me. I have yet to find an instance where someone working for commission was determined to serve my interests rather than his or her own. After all, failure to sell on his or her part means a failure to get paid. And yet companies think this is an efficient way of improving customer service.
During my time working in retail as a commissioned sales associate, I hated it. I hated having to shill products that weren't anywhere close to what people wanted just to be able to put food on the table for my kids. And the worst part? The worst part was that I would be taking the time to help these people find things they were looking to buy, and then when I asked if they would mind letting me write up their items so that I could get paid they would look at me as if I had the plague. Why? Because it would cost them a few seconds while I printed up a ticket for them to give the cashier. The inconvenience of my getting credit for helping them was too much for them to handle.
As a point of reference, here, I worked for a company that employed commission-only sales people. What does that mean? That means the employees have to ticket enough product to equal minimum wage, or else they get fired. A customer who uses them and then either refuses a ticket or throws the ticket away later, behind the employee's back, equal lost wages. Enough people do that, and the employees end up making nothing.
You could say it's the responsibility of the company to take care of its employees. You'd be right. Unfortunately, this company was completely uninterested in the welfare of the employees; they could only see the profit margins. After all, if an employee fails to ticket enough, that's the employee's fault. The items still sell, the company still makes its profit, and has the added bonus of not having to pay the employee for the work they did. It's free labor as far as they're concerned.
What about training? Aren't the employees trained on how to use the sales tools? How to help the customers? Even basic product knowledge?
Nope.
Employees are told they'll just have to figure it out on their own. Again, if they don't, they're fired. This recipe leads to disaster on all sides. No one desperate to make a paycheck is going to give excellent customer service. As a company, they stick their customers with the desperate and greedy instead of competent and friendly. That is just one reason why paying people commission only is a horrible business model, and should be made illegal.
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