To give better service, wear nice clothes — and a smile

I recently shared readers' feelings about the importance of appropriate dress as a customer service representative, as well as tips for people who want to get good results when they call a company's customer-service phone agents.

Readers responded, as always, with thoughts and ideas of their own.

David wrote in an e-mail that clothing definitely affects the quality of customer service.

"For me personally, if I have a situation where the store employee is dressed immodestly or slouchy, I will often go find another person or another store to complete my business," he wrote. "There is nothing worse, in my opinion, than being exposed to a sales associate's breasts or someone's derriere cleavage or belly button and trying to get information or assistance at the same time."

That is just a bit distracting, isn't it?

In the salad days of my youth, I remember seeing people with mullet hairstyles and bizarre clothes. After all, it was the '80s! But at the risk of appearing curmudgeonly, I think that, even then, people who worked in retail were more appropriately dressed than they often are these days.

An online post to my previous column, from "Chris in Texas," also made an '80s reference.

"As ZZ Top once put it, 'Every girl's crazy 'bout a sharp-dressed man.' Or to put in another way, 'Clothes make the man,' " Chris wrote. "We have become way too casual in our dress, appearance and grooming. Trends and fads come and go. I can't wait until conservative dress/grooming comes back.

"Nothing worse than the T-shirt-wearing, messy-haired, tattooed salesperson trying to sell me something. They seem so unauthentic, unprofessional and uncaring. I just can't take them seriously. They show no respect for themselves, me or the product/service they sell."

What do you think? There are probably some businesses in which you would expect the people providing service to be casual — maybe even edgy — in their dress. But is it appropriate for someone to wear such clothes while working in a regular retail environment?

Another online comment, posted anonymously, took a different view.

"While I agree dressing nicely is important, I think we should also recognize that not everyone can afford to buy $200 suits (or even $100 suits), so they can look sharp every day," this commenter wrote. "We are a small business, and as an added incentive, we tell our people they can dress business casual. They can spend less on clothes, since we pay them a little less than they could (earn) elsewhere."

And on Fridays, this commenter wrote, the people in the business can wear jeans.