KRafer - NU12 - Topic 8; Getting transportation for mall shoppers

Kristine Rafer

Entrep-MM

Topic 8: What pisses you off at the mall? What do you suggest?

Most of the time people go to the mall for the purposes of either or combination of;

• Shopping
• Dining
• Stroll

There are so many improvements that these malls in Metro Manila can take on that are associated to the customers' purpose.

Related to shopping, it is bad customer experience to keep them waiting while getting stocks from afar. Often times, waiting time just to get the right item takes about 15 minutes, on the average. Sometimes customer became tired of waiting which caused them to leave instead. This becomes lose of sales to the merchandisers. Another disappointing scenario is that the customer already waited just to know in the end that stock is no longer available.

Dining and strolling or window shopping makes it difficult when looking for a specific restaurant or shop but the facilities, like directories are not reliable and often times not functioning as expected. Right now, directories are present inside the mall to guide customers in the location of the shops but it seems outdated and often times not available.  

I believe that mall staffs are doing everything to keep their facilities working to sustain the needs of their customers. However, consistency to ensure the expected functionality should be enforced. There should be frequency of maintenance and daily checking of the facilities if they are still working as they should be.

As for the immediate availability of the stocks, the merchandisers should be keeping an updated inventory of the stocks at their stall. Keep enough items and sizes of all items on display to make sure that customers are not going to wait for the purchase to be completed.

Another thing that I noticed to be critical is the availability of taxi cabs for the customers. The mall management already provided bays for the taxi cabs to pick up passengers. However, the taxi cabs are not enough to take passengers to their destinations during rush hours and peak seasons like; Christmas and when there is a mall wide sale. Most often, customers tend to go home early not to be caught in the middle of traffic and worst case, past by their means of transportation going home. The mall management can work with the taxi cab operators to get as much as taxi into the mall during rush hours and peak seasons where people always go shopping because of huge discounts. This can be part of the after sales service that the organization can provide to their customers. The taxi drivers will surely get passengers from the mall without wasting time and gas in roaming around to find passengers off the road. This arrangement can surely be worked out by the management of the mall to ensure the safety of their customers. 3