Where Are You, Rico?
I blogged last month about my experience with great customer service provided by a man named Rico. Here’s the other side of the coin—what happens when a customer is treated poorly. Unfortunately, I think this side of the coin is a lot more familiar to most of us.
My husband and I were discussing where to get take-out for dinner. He mentioned a couple of possibilities, minutes from where we live, and then interjected, “Well, I’ve got a blood feud going with Chang’s so we won’t be going there.”
Hmmmm….tell me more.
“Remember that garlic chicken last week that tasted strange? Well, I took it back to the restaurant the next day to get a refund. I felt like the woman gave me a hard time, saying I should have brought it back the same day. I told her to smell it to understand what I was talking about. She told me of course it would smell funny because it was the next day.”
I could see that this incident was not going to be easily forgotten by my husband.
“I told this woman that over the last 8 years, we’ve spent hundreds of dollars on take out food there. All I wanted was a refund or credit for the single dish in 8 years that had gone bad. In fact, it was because we had had so many great meals from them that I thought they would want to know about this bad dish.”
Obviously, this was not the restaurant employee’s view. She offered to give half credit for the dish and only after my husband insisted, did she give him credit for a full order of garlic chicken. My husband made a declaration that is every business’s nightmare:
“I will never go back to that place.”
In the employee’s desire to save a few bucks and be right, she had lost a customer for life.
How many more people will my husband tell this story to? How many more people will I tell this story to?
My husband and I were discussing where to get take-out for dinner. He mentioned a couple of possibilities, minutes from where we live, and then interjected, “Well, I’ve got a blood feud going with Chang’s so we won’t be going there.”
Hmmmm….tell me more.
“Remember that garlic chicken last week that tasted strange? Well, I took it back to the restaurant the next day to get a refund. I felt like the woman gave me a hard time, saying I should have brought it back the same day. I told her to smell it to understand what I was talking about. She told me of course it would smell funny because it was the next day.”
I could see that this incident was not going to be easily forgotten by my husband.
“I told this woman that over the last 8 years, we’ve spent hundreds of dollars on take out food there. All I wanted was a refund or credit for the single dish in 8 years that had gone bad. In fact, it was because we had had so many great meals from them that I thought they would want to know about this bad dish.”
Obviously, this was not the restaurant employee’s view. She offered to give half credit for the dish and only after my husband insisted, did she give him credit for a full order of garlic chicken. My husband made a declaration that is every business’s nightmare:
“I will never go back to that place.”
In the employee’s desire to save a few bucks and be right, she had lost a customer for life.
How many more people will my husband tell this story to? How many more people will I tell this story to?
2 Comments:
Great story ... made me laugh. Made me realize I STILL dislike AMEX, more than 20 years after I called to let them know someone else's charge had ended up on my card (... I mean it was even a different card number on the photocopy ... this was in the days when they still sent you photocopies of your signed paper slip), and they treated me with an attitude. Probably time to let it go, huh? Still, I've refused to have an AMEX card all these years, and I still don't.
In the past few years, it seems like everyone is either so overworked, or so stressed, or so rushed that bad customer service is rampant. I suspect it has something to do with all the technology with which our lives are filled now, which is very ironic. It's sad that a good customer experience like the one you had with Rico is the exception instead of the rule, and it's frustrating that it feels like more and more time these days goes into straightening out mistakes with health-insurance companies, credit card companies, banks, etc. I don't know if it's just that I'm getting old and crabby (ugh), but it just seems like there is a lot more of that these days than there ever was, because so many things don't get done right the first time anymore.
I'll remember your husband the next time we order Chinese from our favorite place, where the food is great and the staff is delightful, which is why we keep going back, of course. :-)
You raise an interesting question:
"What is the cause of poor customer service?"
I love how things are interconnected. On my list of things to blog about is the impact on customers when individuals love their work and conversely, when individuals have become disengaged from their work. I find it pretty transparent--there's a direct correlation to how people feel about their work and what the customer experiences.
More to come in another posting...
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