The Dearth of Customer Courtesy When Availing Shipping Solutions

About KYC, Item Returns, and the Need to Liberate Women from Business Standard Biases  

About a year and a half ago, I went to a shipping outlet to have a personal gift sent out to a certain addressee. Knowing the importance of the KYC (know-your-customer) principle even down the line of the front staff manning the shipping outlet, I expected a little ask, here and there about the details of my transaction. 

However, the transaction which included a thin light calendar (it was just a few weeks after the New Year's revelry),  stashed along with a gift item, stirred the man's unapologetic question, alluding if I directly knew the recipient. 

Despite being used to having dealt with the most formal of business interactions, I welcomed the staff's inquiry. Not knowing where the KYC questioning would turn to. 

And then the man at the counter asked: “Do you know the person?” And I nodded.  And the receiving staff said, “Do you have his phone number”. Thereafter, came more prying questions that were forwardly spoken with unfriendly facial gestures. 

But the most bloated question I took from the guy was when he said: “Baka naman sa social media mo lang nakilala ‘yan!”. [Translation: Maybe you just met the addressee through social media].

Obviously, the curt comment had an innuendo of insult or an estimation of malice, when you happen to be at the receiving line of "KYC" questioning.  From all angles, the line spoken by the shipping personnel could never pass the standards for best practices on customer service.

So casually as a customer, the best reply was to have the convo shortened, and spoken in the most intelligible of lingo that would be accepted by the staff.  Admittedly, it was frustrating to undergo such interaction with an employee from the popular shipping company known for door-to-door package solutions and countless seller "item/package" transactions.  

On my end, the impersonal question was not an innocent attempt to know the customer prior to approving the package for shipment. It was obvious that the guy had already arrived at a judgment before he asked it. There was clear prejudice.

Situations like these are not uncommon if you are familiar with the nitty-gritty troubles of sending an item through established shipping companies. But sadly, there is a death of well-intended customer courtesy practices, in the way employees at the desk counter handle transactions from women customers.

The most common complaint does not involve the price point for sending out packages. The complaint can actually arise from the way items are accepted, and scrutinized; and the way customers are questioned by personnel who posture to not bother at all when it comes to politeness towards walk-in customers. 

Another factor that can meddle in the business courtesy exerted by shipping employees or the lack of it, towards their customers, is the point of familiarity with a customer, which can kick in if the branch or outlet is located in the community, or within the residence of the employee. 

Community-level businesses that accept local residents as employees often do not observe formality in the conduct of their business; simply because employees are confident of their territorial and customer base familiarity.

Many times, walk-in customers are known to the staff who would be handling and approving the items for delivery. Here exists a risk of a certain customer being profiled before he/she even walks into the shipping outlet.

Factors like frequency of business dealings; social media presence and undeniably the sixth degree of connection among neighbors could also affect the climate of business within the shipping branch.  

In the earlier-mentioned situation, having to deal with the male employee resulted in exposure to being slighted in the manner that the KYC standards were implemented.  

And these were not all. 

In another incident, as a customer, an experience could be recalled about how another male staff from another shipping company where a return of a purchased item from e-commerce, was requested and declined eventually. 

The shipping outlet had a different standard. However, the out-of-the-norm detail encountered by the customer was when the male employee requested to see the customer's phone and was instructed to hand it in over at the desk counter, so the staff could check out the transaction code to process the return of an item.

Seeing it was not necessary because as a customer, it was a better prompt to just write the numeric code on paper and give it to the personnel, rather than hand out a phone for the staff to scrutinize and look into.  The instruction when granted, would have been a clear invasion of the privacy of communications, a right of the customer that cannot be compromised even in the case of a return item transaction.  

There are many variations in the way shipping companies handle their different transactions. 

But a common experience that one must watch out for when transacting, is the insensitivity towards customers by the male personnel who are manning the outlet/s.  

What power do customers have over these situations when an obvious possibility that presupposes KYC adherence is that anyone who has access to social media can swipe left and right their phones right at the moment of the transaction, as the customer is trying to send an item or receive an item from a shipping outlet?  This negates the ideals of fairness in business transactions.

The point here is that there must be a boundary as to how the employees of shipping companies, respond, relate, or handle their customers' inquiries and packages. 

Packages must be handled carefully and not obviously scrutinized so as to embarrass a customer with a diminutive line of questioning especially when the items have commercial value or are being sent out for personal purposes. 

There is an obvious dearth of well-trained personnel among shipping companies, who cannot even carry on courteous conversations with customers knowing that the clients need their service at a time when door-to-door delivery and shipping solutions are at a peak of demand, even way after the pandemic's social distancing timeline.

[opinion. business] Name of shipping companies/outlets purposely withheld by this writer.