Here's a customer service pop quiz for you. See if you can do better than the folks at Great Wraps in Westfield Gateway Mall.
A customer comes to you carrying a plate containing an uneaten food item she purchased just moments before. She tells you this item, supposed to be served piping hot, is instead cold. She asks you to remake it. You:
A) Apologize profusely, whip up a new item, and be sure it is acceptable before she takes it back to her table. Think about punching her punch card a couple extra times for the trouble.
B) Grunt, put together a new item with minimal effort and send the woman on her way.
C) Say "No". When pressed, over-nuke the item and act pissed off the entire time.
You may have guessed that the man behind the counter opted for C last night. In what sort of bizarre customer service training are you taught to say "No" to a request that an item actually be prepared correctly?
Anyway, this incident plus a couple others ends The Missus's days of patronizing Great Wraps. Good riddance to bad rubbish, as they say.
Comments
See what your friends and neighbors have to say about this.
You may not want to go through the effort, but when I have service somewhere that is that bad, I will contact the home office.
It won’t bother me if it puts heat on the franchisee here. You should be treated better.
It won’t bother me if it gets someone fired. You should be treated better.
More than likely, you will get a) a refund, or b) free coupons to entice you back, or c) both. Perhaps you won’t be enticed, but I think it’s worth the effort to lodge the complaint.
I stayed at the Great Wolf Lodge this summer, and had a couple of bad service issues that killed the good feelings I otherwise would have walked away with. I wrote to the manager. He and his assistant said they’d handle it, then proceeded to handle it poorly. I persisted, and my niceness wore off.
I got a voucher for a free night for my family. Will I go back? I’m not sure - but I am more than likely to go back for my free night then I would have otherwise. Without it, I doubt they’d ever get me back.
I complain to restaurants when I have a truly bad experience, and am always rewarded with something. Even if I swear that I won’t go back, I often can be won back for at least one trip with free food. I’m a whore that way. LOL
Yeah, I haven’t decided if it’s worth the effort. I realize the customer is not always right, but last night she most definitely was.
As for the free stuff you can get from complaining, if you really don’t want to patronize the business any more you can give the stuff to charity. I once gave a $50 mea culpa gift certificate to a charity, and they then used it for a raffle or something.
Another approach: one time I had a coupon for free popcorn at a movie theater. I hate theater popcorn so when the people in front of me ordered popcorn I said “that’s on me” and gave them the coupon.
I agree with you that going to management is worth the time. Having said that, I have only gone to those lengths if the culprit was a local manager. If it was some grumpy kid, I usually cut them some slack.
Once I got horrible service for the general manager at a McDonald’s. I got home, called them back up, and ask for the Regional Manager. That’s the way to go if you really want to have an impact.
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