The Suki-urity Guard Saves the Day

We spend a fortune on pharmaceutical products - our vitamins and medicines, those of the kids too. We're at the drug store practically every other week.

One popular drug store chain has a "Suki" card - a card which will give holders who happen to be frequent buyers a reasonable amount of discount on future purchases. We finally decided to apply for one just recently.

We were told to inquire at the customer service section. Well, we customers found the section - but there was no service. We stood there for about 10-15 minutes and about 5-6 staff passed us by several times. We decided not to utter a single word - as an experiment to see how far the "lack of service" would go. After awhile, we started to wonder if we were invisible.

Luckily for us, the customer service section happened to be near a guard who took care of bags and other stuff which had to be deposited at the entrance of the establishment. After awhile, he probably took pity on us and said: "Ano pong kailangan nila?" ("What do you need?") We explained what we were there for and we were impressed and thankful as he knew all the answers.

Anyway, we finally ended up getting what we needed. A "customer service" person, who earlier passed us by several times, gave us the forms we needed as soon as we had shown the required P1,000 in receipts (as we were informed by the guard earlier).

Well, I learned in marketing class that every person in any organization plays a marketing role. The guard who helped us out instinctively knew this. As for the regular "customer service" people, maybe they should just take care of the bags?