Can I help you? Why retail customers always say No

"People wouldn’t (especially men) enter a store just for the sake of it, they want help."

I prefer to engage with others as little when I enter a store. I want to find the stuff I want, pay for it, and get out. I'm even willing to spend twice as much time (or more) looking for what I want than I would have if I have go engage with a store assistant.

I'm not exactly socially awkward, either. I just hate shopping. I find stores quite adversarial. I feel that assistants aren't really there to help me; they're there to maximize profits for their employer. I prefer to make a buying decision without the time pressure I feel if I'm being helped. If I'm told "you look great in that" I am unable to figure out if it's really suitable for me, or if the assistant just wants to make a sale, or if the assistant hasn't been able to judge me accurately.

My answer to “Are you after pants or tops today?” will always be “I'm just looking; thanks.”

We always say no because, at least for me, it's pretty rare that I actually need help. I am, in general, capable of following signs and locating where in the store I need to be. Maybe I'll have to ask where they put the widgets, because it turns out they're in sporting goods instead of tools as I'd thought.

But now, assume I'm shopping for clothes. This 19-year-old girl doesn't know me, she doesn't know what kind of clothes I wear beyond what I currently have on. She doesn't know what kind of price range I'm looking at, or even what particular clothes I'm currently looking for. I could stand there and relate all these things, at which point she can point at shirts ("how about this one?") until we find one I like... or maybe I can just go look at the shirts myself?

If I'm in Radio Shack trying to pick up a transistor, there's almost no chance the kid behind the counter can help me. He just wants to sell me a cellphone. He might not even be aware that the store stocks electronics components, much less what a transistor looks like. Any real help will have to come from the Internet; I surely can't ask if these two diodes are equivalent, or if this coax cable is suitable for VHF operation, because he'll just say "yeah, I think so" and try to sell me a phone.

If I go to a car dealership, the last thing I want is to see someone walking toward me, but we all can relate to that.

About the only time I really want someone to come ask if they can help me is at a gun shop, because the things I want to see are usually locked in a glass case or hung up on the wall.

I've always liked the stores where the staff simply say something like:

'Hello! Let me know if you need any help finding a size.' (or other relevant offer of help depending on the shop), then leave you to get on with shopping.

I then find it much more comfortable asking for help if / when I need it, and with no pressure, compared with if it's been agressively offered and I've already turned it down, or if I've been ignored by shelf-stackers and am made to feel like I'm interupting.

How to annoy your shoppers by coercively distracting their attention.

A good steward wants to serve the customer, either by engaging them or not, as the customer prefers. A bad steward wants to engage the customer whether they want to or not. A really bad steward thinks the customer is too stupid to notice their coercive attempts at the latter.

Maybe I'm a minority (though not in here, I'm sure) as I'm a bit of an introvert but I strongly prefer to browse on my own. Whenever I am asked something "clever" like suggested in the article, I get annoyed because I feel like I'm being manipulated.

Sometimes you get a blogpost that sounds smart and insightful but unfortunately it is not since the author's objective is to sound smart, get kudos etc..... I have spent six years working in retail from low end to high end. I also survived 3 months as a waiter and I will give you practical advice for this situation and not try and extrapolate this advice to alll sales situations.

1) Yes, people hate the do u need any help question but not because of the question in itself. It is because they usually have just entered the store and they get just asked this and since they have not had a chance to look at anything they obviously don't need any help. The reason why this mistake gets repeated over and over is because from a distance there is a manager who will usually get pissed off if they don't. You might say that the manager should be smart enough to know this is dumb but I have no idea why they still do maybe power trip.

2)How to ask the do you need any help question. You have to just watch your consumers from a distance, greet them and walk away, make them feel free but slightly monitor their gestures. As time goes on you develop a skill to see which customer needs help, for example they standing with one shoe in their hand looking around whith their head tilted up, ask them if they need help, they will be very happy. If your manager is standing around unfortunately you have to be annoying and ask consumers as soon as they enter the store.

During my 3 month waiter stint in college, a famous singer came by to eat, she just happened to sit at my table, boy did I regret it. The owner of the restaurant practically had his chin at my shoulder. This guy was freaking out, he had me asking them if everything was fine every 3 minutes, until the singers manager asked me too give them some space. I went back and told the owner, his reply to me was that I was fucking up big time. Lol!

I worked computer retail for a bit over 3 years and I think the best opening line was always "hello" or "good morning/afternoon/evening", with a by "welcome to [store]".

The best follow-up was to not only look busy but be busy. Stocking shelves or merchandising was always effective. People who want help but are shy about it always seem willing to spontaneously talk with employees who are busy doing something... it's a strange concept.

"Are you looking for pants or tops" is assumptive and manipulative. Remember this chestnut from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4795139 : "Which one are you most impressed by?" How about neither, you swarmy ass?

I always say No because I usually enter a store with a product (or product type) already in mind and just desperately want to avoid getting upsold by the packs of roving sales peoples trying to boost their commission by selling me something I don't need.

I have occasionally had good experiences talking to sales types at retail places (including just a couple days ago) but normally if they get persistent I just end up ducking out and getting what I want from Amazon.

It depends on what the retail store sells.

My student job was working at a bookstore. Our customers are a special breed, I think, but there are some generalisations that can be made.

I sometimes heard (albeit very rarely) my coworkers ask "Fiction or nonfiction?" But that didn't necessarily increase sells from our observation and discussions we had about this approach. But some supervisors pushed this concept to "get the conversation going". Truth is, you need to be yourself when facing a customer. There are as many different customers as there are personalities in a workplace.

It's true that it depends on your customer. But most of them want to be left the heck alone. So what approach worked for me?

Asking a casual, open-ended question or making a comment about them. This allowed me to gauge whether this person wanted help or not. It worked most of the time. It's all about making the customer feel comfortable with you.

Casual questions/comments I would say:

1. Oh! I've heard a lot of good things about that book. Apparently [insert author/interesting book fact that doesn't reveal much of it]

2. Hey, how's it going?

3. Jesus, is it still pouring out there?

4. Hey, watchoo lookin for?

5. Okay, it looks like you are trying to find something (when they appear lost and are going in circles in place)

6. Hi. (simply acknowledging them -- you can tell they don't want to be talked to if they act distracted, make an effort to avoid eye contact or walk busily/quickly away from you)

In the end, every customer will find an answer to get out of any question, full stop. So don't try to fake it.

If they are already holding a book, that is the easiest target, because you can make assumptions about that person and start a genuine conversation.

Another is actually a close-ended question:

*What section are you looking for?

The trick there was the follow-up comment/question. Say they said "history". Okay. "Oh, the new Trudeau biography just came out and the biographer had a bunch of access to documents and files which no other person has ever looked at".

If they said "Not sure". A chuckle then "Is it a gift or for a special occasion?" Sometimes customers don't know what they are looking for, actually. You need to have an honest demeanour. In the end, I was always honest with the people I dealt with and had people visit me to talk to me. Probably half of us had degrees or were in the process of getting degrees so we had our own specialisations. I had a bunch of people who remembered me and we would recommend books to each other and just chat. I spoke for a couple of hours to customers about philosophy or Latin American literature and history. A few were extremely impressed with my knowledge and the same occurred with my other coworkers.

This building of rapport is the best thing, I think. Almost like selling is an afterthought. Humanising the transaction is better, I think. And something that I feel is lacking in a lot of customer service. We're all humans. All of us have our bad days.

If there was a customer looking for something I had no idea of, I'd think of someone who did know. And would tell them honestly, "Actually, I have no idea about that, but I think my other coworker might. Let me call her/him". If no one knew, which happened sometimes, we would try to help them the best we could. In a lot of these cases, we had no solution. But the customer was happy that we at least tried.

If we never stocked a particular book, we'd recommend them to another bookstore. We had a binder filled with different bookstores. Most were surprised we did this.

Despite all of this, this bookstore is one of the most hated in the city I lived in (if not the entire country). Poor management, too bureaucratic, and old habits. Plus, inconsistency between other locations (it is a chain bookstore).

The absolute worse thing about working there had to be PROMOS, as in, the giving out of flyers/coupons. Very, very, very, very few people like being handed stuff. And many customers knew we suffered (they could see it in our faces), so a minority took them out of sympathy. The biggest problem with this was that when giving the flyer there was an unspoken time frame to hand and explain the promotion. And this time frame was about 5 seconds or less, and usually there was a caveat to a promotion that required more time to explain, because it seemed like the nature of marketing was to purposefully create convoluted/complicated scenarios where the promotion would apply.

Anyway. My two cents. Sorry, it was an unabridged/unedited and not proofread response.

I'm rather introverted and I very much don't want help from employees in stores. So much so that stores lose sales from me, and I wonder how many sales across the board stores are losing.

The other day I went into an Apple store to consider getting an iPad Mini. I was immediately approached by an employee who very eagerly wanted to show me how light it is, how beautiful the screen is, etc. I told him I really just wanted to look, and he agreed and left. But I immediately left the store, because I knew he'd come back in a few minutes, which I really didn't want.

I also tend to avoid shopping at Best Buy because you get stopped by no less than three employees on each visit. I know it's company policy, but how much money are they losing to introverts and/or grumpy people?

For me it started with waiters: a good waiter can really help you figure out what to order, or what to drink.

Instead of staring at the menu for 5 minutes (while your dear friend, or wife, or parent) is right there with you, just glance at it, get a few ideas, and then ask the waiter:

"I'm pretty hungry. The chicken looks good, is it <insert feared or desired quality here: heavy, filling, too cheesy, high quality meat>?"

Or with wine: "I love jammy Zinfandels: berry berry all the way! Do you have anything like this?"

Once you start interacting with waiters in this way, you hea out into the country and go to Big Boy or whatever, and you get this surly, timid young person, and you ask your questions, and they look at you like you're from Mars.

And you realize: this person (probably very nice person), but this person has never really learned what a waiter is.

It's really about interacting with people, putting them at ease, helping them navigate the menu, allowing them to focus on the people they are with. It's far more than just accepting orders and bringing food like a robot.

Anyways: people in retail stores are also like this and you should be able to use them to find better things to buy than you otherwise would.

They can be a great help and smart people will take advantage of their help.

This is one of the reasons online shopping is so successful. I have never enjoyed being asked questions by employees when I enter a store. I go in with something in mind (or just to browse to kill time) and get out with or without my product.

Article should be titled "How to drive your customers to online retailers."

Apollo Robbins (the pickpocket http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2013/01/video-... ) explains an approach that worked very well for me.

When I managed a retail store (ages ago), I would take a clipboard, get near the customer as if I was checking inventory, then wait a moment. If they didn't ask anything, I would turn away, then look back briefly and say "Let me know if I can help you find anything."

It worked amazingly well for a 6'2" athletic build guy like myself. Other approaches failed pretty badly (partly because of my intimidating size to some).

It let me sense how comfortable people were with me near their space, and customize how "nonchalant" I needed to be in asking if I could help them find anything. All in all, a way to enter people's space with them feeling comfortable having me there.

If Im shopping for clothes I go straight for a salesperson. I use them as personal shoppers and ask them to go find jeans in my size that meet some loose criteria. If I find a shirt in thats too small I'll ask them to bring the right size. Sometimes you can be brutally honest with the "can I help you?" and just ask them what looks good and is on sale. They'll grin and point you in the right direction. If you're buying dress shirts I've found the salespeople to have insight into which brands will fit your unusually wide shoulders without looking awkward.

Don't feel uncomfortable rejecting their suggestions either. It's an iterative process. Once you don't need them say "alright, thanks so much for your help" and they'll leave you alone.

My body language will tell you if I want help or not.

What phrase is used to initiate that interaction is completely irrelevant, but attempts to entrap me in an interaction I don't want will always yield a negative response. Just the level of awkwardness may very.

This thread is extremely compelling. Honestly, I think it is probably a function of the readership of HN being composed of programmers, engineers, and other problem solvers.

"I don't need help, I can do it myself."

Honestly, it is pretty easy to tell whether or not the salesperson knows what he or she is talking about. There is a huge difference between a sleazy sales guy trying to get you into a cheap suit and a person who legitimately understands the product they are selling and can outline all of the reasons why you want Thing X instead of Thing Y or provide honest feedback about style or look (if shopping for fashion). Give the person that approached you a chance! You might find that they are in fact knowledgeable about the product and can assist you in making a more informed purchasing decision. You just need to be confident enough to work with them and not just be a "sales victim."

It is particularly interesting through the lens of how you sell your own startup's product.

Everything we do is sales. The landing page is painstakingly crafted, the color of the call-to-action button is A/B tested, optimized for maximum effect. Then, you do CPC campaigns, carefully perfecting the ad copy and headline. I really, really fail to see how this is different. Olark's whole business is premised on the idea that a human being should be available to answer customer questions.

Am I way off-base here, or am I the only person in this room who actually likes interacting with salespeople?

EDIT: Adding clarity to the Olark point.

I've seen something new and excitingly terrible in both Sears and Home Depot recently. They have dedicated sales people whose sole job is to approach customers and try to sell them on credit cards or kitchen remodels or whatever high profit thing they are pushing at the time. They presumably work on commission based on the hard sell and they have no knowledge like the real salespeople.

They're basically training people to say "No" to people who approach them in stores. Very short-sighted.

People adapt pretty quickly to that kind of slimy tricks. A few years ago, banks in my town would offer credit cards to everything with a pulse. They would put kiosks at the mall with sales people harassing passing customers, and they were trained to approach you exactly like this.

In a few months, everybody would know exactly what to do: Avoid eye contact, speed up when passing by, do not listen to them, do not even let them finish their sentence, and just say "No, thank you".

I actually had just this experience last week when I went shopping for jeans. Instead of asking me that dreaded first question (to which my response is invariably no), she simply pointed me to men's jeans, asked me my size, asked what kind of style I was looking for (X or Y), and picked out a few pairs for me to try on.

It was great. From a business point of view, I didn't spend any more than I'd intended, but I finished quicker and left with a positive impression.

The problem I have with the "Can I help you?" question comes from the standpoint of an old German UseNet and IRC user.

Here we have the special word "Metafrage". A Metaquestion is a question that can be answered by Yes/No, provides no information what the other wants or needs, and any yes or no answer wont tell him anything. Its often just a polite noise, that becomes impolite, if used to often, e.g. in terms of moms just calling "Can you help me?" hurrying away without telling what kind of help she needs, assuming or better say commanding a "yes" as answer.

Its like joining an IRC channel with: "Can someone help me?" Most often nobody would answer, same to "Is someone here?". So a salesdroid starting conversation with a "Can I help you?" is a helpless newbie compared to someone who joined IRC first time by webchat.

>Third – don’t feel guilty or pushy doing it. People wouldn’t (especially men) enter a store just for the sake of it, they want help.

That made me laugh. I usually go into clothing stores exactly just for the sake of it - I like fashion, only buy when I see something special and never know what I'm looking for. Women's fashion is far more varied of course - my male friends are always dismayed that they don't have more choice but I wonder back: would you wear unique designs the way women will, if they were offered?

Back to the question: I'll invariably refuse help unless I am absolutely looking for something specific, which case I'll seek out a staff member immediately and bother them to tell me if they have it so I don't waste my time in their shop looking.

I don't always say "no". An offer of help is fine, that double-pronged question is _really_ annoying.

We all know the salesperson is there to sell. Fine. Being manipulated into a conversation against our will is just irritating. I generally don't go back to such places.

Maybe because the customer doesn't want to be bothered?

Some stores do a better job of this than others. REI in particular has usually been amazing. I went in last weekend for a shirt, and saw that packs are on sale. The salesman there fitted me for a pack, recommended a cheaper one than I was getting that turned out to be a better pack, then asked if there was anything else I would like to know about, without pushing a hardsale. By the end of the trip, I had a new pack, a new down sleeping bag, some compression sacks, and a few other things. That guy, based on his knowledge, and just being generally friendly without feeling sleezy turned a 20 dollar sale into about $600 in sales.

Not everybody reacts the same way.

Some people don't like being approached at all and will almost literally run off the moment you go near them. They might buy, but only if you don't hassle them.

Some people want you to approach them, but don't want to engage in a cushy conversation, they know why they are there and what they want, they are genuinely just looking and you're distracting them, but they want to know you are there incase you have a question.

Some people who do want to be sold on your sales banter, after all, that's why they entered your shop.

I worked in retail for a few years and the approach I always took was to say hello or make eye contact and smile. That way if the customer needs help they know you are there but they dont feel harassed.

I'll second all the anecdotes on this page plus add that I often won't even enter stores, especially small ones, if I judge it likely there will be too many "vultures".

I don't begrudge retail workers, really - I suppose they have a job to do. But geeze I wish they'd be more intelligent about whom they bother, and when. If I have not made eye contact beyond the initial "hello", then I probably do not need or want to be "helped" and following me around proffering same just makes me feel uncomfortable.

Even if I know more or less what I am looking for, I'd still rather do it on my own time than have a sales associate "help" me. I always feel like I am pressured in to making a decision faster than I would otherwise. If they are helping me and I do try to take my time to make the decision I always get the impression of mounting frustration at my indecisiveness. That's why I prefer sales associates who say "let me know if you need any help" and then just leave me alone.

I always feel that if I answer "yes" to "can I help you?" it implies that was just randomly bumbling around the shop like a lost idiot, too incompetent even to ask for help.

Working in a grocery store is different. Usually, the response is is "Where on this shelf is the BrandX Turkey Sausage Gravy packet?"

(Of course, an old grocery retail tradition is to "reset" the store -- moving sections around and moving products around within sections, to increase the time customers spend in their local store. I wonder when this practice will become common for website portals like Yahoo, to increase the time spent on the page with ads?)

I hope any manager-types that read this article realize how irritating it is to walk into a store and immediately have some asshole attach themselves to your hip.

Unless your store is gargantuan, I'm perfectly able to find things myself and I don't want your annoying "sales associates" hovering around like mosquitoes.

People give the "No, thanks" response because salespeople are universally irritating.

Too often, when I'm looking for an employee to ask a question they're nowhere to be found - but when I just want to look around, they intrude.

What's needed is not a new way to trick the customer into conversing, instead we need employees to learn how to notice whether a customer is looking for help or doing fine on his/her own. And employers to allow this instead of requiring them to be aggressive.

I really hope people don't follow this. In my experience this ends up with a question I find offensive, something like "What can I find for you today?" Which implies I'm not capable of reading an isle sign myself. I find this particularly amusing when I got into retail stores I've worked at before and I know exactly where what I'm looking for is.

What awful advice. I prefer someone to ask me "Can I help you?" If I need help I'll tell him, if I don't right now I'll tell him. Cornering me like that with a two choice question would just provoke me to rudely answering "I'll let you know when I need help".

I wish the retail business model was more focused on making me leave their establish happy and satisfied than having made a purchase. Try to understand what I actually want, not how you can extract money out of me.

The goal is to sell widgets, not to interact with customers. Sometimes they go hand-in-hand, sometimes they don't, sometimes one works against the other.

When I was working at an electronics shop, we would ask "have you been served yet?" It's a much harder question to get out and customers responded better.

Saying "No thanks" is more polite than what I really mean, which is "Go away, you're bothering me".

We don't always say no, we just say no when we don't need help, which is most of the time.

“Are you after pants or tops today?” – ‘Yes.’