Last week in Scranton, PA, a black woman went to a hotel to get a room. The clerk refused to give her a room, even though there were plenty
of rooms available. The lady asked if she wasn't being given a room because she was black, which might seem like a kneejerk reaction to the issue.
In this case, however, the clerk answered truthfully and said "Yes."
Of course we know a big time lawsuit is coming, and someone is about to lose her job, and someone else is about to cash in big, but this isn't a
newsletter about race, but rather customer service. Most of the time when we hear news stories, we don't get big parts of it to make more
informed decisions. For instance, in this story, was the clerk racist, or was a part of her training that black people, or black women, or black
people dressed certain ways, or black people who gave off a certain vibe, not to be welcomed into the hotel? We don't know any of this, but we can
probably guess one thing for sure; the person wasn't given proper customer service training, nor did anyone evaluate her before letting her be at a
welcoming desk on her own, because either that behavior would have been caught or someone passed her through as "getting it". At least she was
honest.
In the last two weeks I've seen, and heard, some pretty bad customer service acts that have stunned me. For instance, last week at one fast
food restaurant, the drive thru not only took 10 minutes, and I was only the 3rd car in line, but they messed up my order so badly that I actually
complained to the corporate office.
Then over the weekend, one of my colleagues went to another fast food place, said the same kind of thing happened to her (and you can't pull
out of line and drive off because there are cement barriers in place, so you're pretty much trapped), and when she got to the window finally, in
pouring rain, her order not only wasn't in a bag, but it wasn't covered, and it was raining, and basically her meal was ruined. When she asked to
speak to a manager she was told there wasn't a manager, but a shift leader. She asked the shift leader if there was a phone number she could
call and was told no, but "maybe" she could look it up on the internet. She was miffed, but did that very thing and complained to the corporate
offices that way.
This week, I asked her to take me to that same place, but I wanted to go inside to see what things looked like. There were 3 young people working
there, all had to be between 16 and 17 years old, with no adult supervision anywhere. One of the machines must have been damaged in some
fashion because ice cream was spattered all over the walls and the machine. The floors were a mess, and I wondered if there were some kind of
rodents who were having their fill. I asked for a hotdog and was told that they were out of hotdog buns, but that they could put it on a hamburger
bun; does that sound right?
I still ordered something, which was a mistake because I'd forgotten about the one machine that they were working on. Still, it gave me a chance
to observe things; at least the kids kept their cool. However, when I left, there were 7 cars in the drive thru, where there had only been 2 when I
got there, and there were 5 or 6 families waiting to put in their orders after mine, but when I got there I was only behind one person. Things were
going awry in a hurry, and there wasn't a true leader anywhere to be found. In essence, the young people working there didn't have a chance to
provide good customer service, and could only do the best they knew how to do. I left realizing I couldn't blame the kids, but management really
had dropped the ball.
Management drops the ball often around the country because they don't want to hear potentially bad news, waiting until bad news is a reality before
reacting. And when they react, many times it's badly, being more accusatory than trying to rectify the situation. It's no wonder employees are
hesitant to stick their necks out anymore; they feel as though they're going to get it from both sides, and often they do. Of course sometimes it's
deserved, but many other times, it's really not an employees fault.
How many times have you gone to a restaurant late in the evening, only to be told that they ran out of the item you wanted to order? Is that the
fault of the person trying to take your order, or someone in a leadership position who underestimated the popularity of a particular item? In a
case like that, are you hoping the person who's giving you the bad news is genuinely sorry for your disappointment, or do you care and want to beat
up on that person because you're angry at the establishment? In either case, do you understand whom your complaint is really with? Or, for that
matter, do you care, especially if it impacts your decision as to whether to give that business another chance or not?
Personally, I've always felt that customer service is the second most important thing a company can teach their employees. Good customer service
will help your customers overlook things that don't go perfectly. Good customer service helps teach your employees how to stay focused and in
control, and when they project it onto others, and get positive feedback even from bad news, it motivates them and rejuvenates them and they'll
want to try harder and work harder and go out of their way more often for both the business and the clientele. When people want to do better,
they're more open to training and retraining, which can only benefit the company in the long run. It all falls along the lines of the concept of
"paying it forward". No one loses when a company's customer service is supreme.
Think about this the next time you encounter bad customer service, and how you or your company's own customer service policies compare to it.