Yesterday I was reading another story where it was a bad example of customer service. It seems problems started when a consumer went to a restaurant with her husband and had a meal that she thought was substandard. Today went to an online meeting service, Yelp, and wrote a negative review about the place. That’s when things took a very bad turn.

The owner of the restaurant, which shall remain nameless because it’s really a tasteless name for restaurant decided to go on the attack. Because he had the woman’s name, although it’s never clear how he got it since she paid cash, he went and looked around online and found she had a Facebook account. He then posted her picture on his Facebook business page with some very unflattering words about her and her apparent lack of tipping, as well as saying she and her husband licked the plates clean so they must have liked the food.

He received a few responses supporting him. Unfortunately, he received a lot more responses telling him off for his bad behavior in treating a customer at that. And, since it seems his restaurant had been on the down slope anyway, it didn’t make a lot of new friends who might be encouraged to visit his restaurant.

Because the response was swift, he pulled the picture and his original statement and issued an apology, which would have been good except he once again added that it all occurred because the customer didn’t tip the waitress. Someone eventually told the customer that she was being talked about, and she went to the page and said that she did indeed tip, paying $40 for a bill that came to $32. She said that based on the food no tip should have been warranted, but that the waitress did treat her nice. She also said that her husband licked his plate because he liked the barbecue sauce, and that he wasn’t as picky about his food as she was.

The overall problem is that this was a restaurant in disarray, on the brink of closing because it had few customers, and here was someone who probably wrote a review the owner should have learned something from to make his product better. Instead, he went on the attack because his feelings were hurt; that’s never a good thing in general. No one was going to mistake it for good customer service that I previously wrote about.

I certainly understand someone not wanting to accept something bad being said about their business; I know I wouldn’t like it. But there are definitely better ways of defending oneself than what this restaurant owner did. You never try to shame a customer, even if you’re totally in the right, unless they did something really heinous. You also don’t allow your staff to do anything like this.

In business, you always have to think of the big picture and decide how you want to handle things. You can either do something positive about it if it’s warranted, or ignore it and move on, but never get on the bad side of someone whose bad side you’re already on. It never improves for you and can get even worse, as this owner has discovered.
 

Copyright protected by Digiprove © 2012 Mitch  Mitchell

I write 5 blogs; I know, where do I find the time. One of those blogs covers things that happen in the Syracuse and central New York area, called Syracuse Wiki.

On Christmas day I had a post go live talking about an experience my wife and I had at a local Ponderosa restaurant, the last one in the Syracuse area. Suffice it to say, the review wasn’t a good one. There were a lot of problems my wife and I saw, and outside of the waitresses it was a bad time with a bad meal.

I pretty much figured that my article was written, the post went live, and that would be that. I don’t like writing bad reviews but I am honest in what I experience. What I didn’t expect was that the first response to the post that I would get would come from the vice president of operations for the national chain. His response asked if I would contact him so we could discuss things further.

I’d pretty much said most of what I wanted to say in the post but I had more that I could add. He gave me an email address so I wrote him and added some things that I didn’t write in the article. I put down a phone number in case he wanted to call me and sent it off.

A couple of hours later I received a phone call from the district manager that oversees that particular Ponderosa restaurant and we had a nice conversation. She was dismayed by all the things I said except for my praise of the two waitresses that took care of our needs while we were there. Near the end of the phone call I said that I was impressed with the steps that upper management was taking in looking at my claims. I believe they saw that I wasn’t a crank that was complaining because I had an axe to grind, and that was important to me. I don’t gripe unless I offer criticism of a nature that someone can look at and fix for the next time; well, most of the time I don’t.

Will my concerns be addressed? I actually think so, but what’s more important is that someone from the company, at a high level, took the time to reach out to me and to make sure that someone else did as well. That shows dedication in my mind, and my wife and I will definitely partake of the free breakfast buffet coupons that are coming our way. We’ll probably wait a few weeks before going, but I expect that at least most of my concerns will be taken care of by then.

Great customer service can save you from customers leaving your business forever, but it’s only a first step. Positive changes need to occur when possible and necessary as well. At least they’ve done enough to get me to give them another chance; that’s pretty good.
 

Copyright protected by Digiprove © 2011 Mitch  Mitchell

There’s a restaurant I go to often that I’ve deemed is my place of choice. It’s called Pier 57, and it’s just about 5 minutes from my house. I do have other restaurants that I enjoy a lot, but this is pretty much my lunch restaurant.

They have a lot of people working there as waitstaff. I find that interesting because most restaurants I go to have only a few people, and you get used to seeing those same people over and over. In this case I’ve had to try to remember the names of at least 13 people to date, and I’m failing miserably at it, as I know without having to think about it the names of half of them. But I keep trying.

Those folks that have seen me more than a couple of times already know what I want when I get there. I won’t be sitting a minute before they’ve brought me what they know I’m going to order to drink, and the way I like it. They also know what I’m going to order for lunch; okay, I almost always order the exact same thing so that’s easy. I get my meal fairly quickly, and the check on me often.

This isn’t the only restaurant where I have similar experiences though. I must go to enough places often enough so that they start memorizing what I like. However, I’ve noticed that even restaurants that I don’t go to all that often are pretty good at customer service. Sure, every once in awhile you get one that’s not doing things all that well, but it’s a rare occurrence for me.

Have you ever wondered what it is about restaurants that seem to drive great customer service? I have, and here are 4 things I tend to believe.

1. There definitely is a relationship between how they treat us and how much we’ll tip. Since waitstaff gets paid less per hour than anyone else in this country, they know that they can make more money by being overly nice than by being snippy. I’m one of those people that tends to tip really well because of it.

2. When most of us go out to eat we’re looking to have a good time. Because we’re not tense we don’t shift bad vibrations onto the people who will be bringing us our food for the evening. Most people are perceptive enough to know when someone’s ready to have a good time or isn’t mentally feeling all that well and they can tend to take on someone else’s emotions.

3. They understand that how they treat us reflects on the employer, their continued employment and whether customers come back or not. I’ve known people who will go back to a restaurant where the food wasn’t great because they were treated well. I’m not one of those people, but I am the type that will forgive a bad night by the people cooking my food because the people out on the floor have been gracious.

4. They’re allowed to make decisions for the customer’s benefit. If we don’t like something they can take it back and remove it from the bill, or bring us something we might not have asked for as compensation for our troubles. Sure, it might take money away from the restaurant at the moment, but it will pay great dividends later on.

How many of these principles can be transferred to other businesses to help with their client relations? I tend to believe all of them can, and any company that cares enough about their business to educate their employees on principles like these will show positive results in more ways than they can imagine. Are you taking the opportunity to help your employees become better at customer service processes?
 

Copyright protected by Digiprove © 2011 Mitch  Mitchell

Last week I wrote a post titled a When Racism Is Unhidden and I mentioned an incident that kind of happened to me. Well, I did decide to follow up on it and called the manager of that particular outlet, just to give him a heads up. I said that I didn’t believe it was malicious at all, just insensitive and inappropriate based on where the conversation took place. He said he’d investigate and get back to me.

When I hung up I thought about what he said and wondered just what he could do to investigate and why I needed to be called back. I knew a few things up front. One, no matter who he asked about it no one would remember it because there was no incident; I didn’t react. Two, even if someone did remember the conversation, who’d be stupid enough to own up to it? Three, if the video I knew they had didn’t have sound, that wouldn’t show anything. And four, even if you found something and disciplined someone, the best you could have to offer me is to say that you’d disciplined them; you can’t tell me what you did and truthfully, I shouldn’t even know.

Still, he’d said it and true to his word, he called me yesterday to say he’d looked into it, didn’t see an incident, yet still talked to his entire staff about making sure that their behavior is always appropriate wherever there are customers, and went a step further in saying that even if customers weren’t around there was certain behavior and words he wasn’t going to tolerate. I thanked him for that and that was the end of our conversation.

When I thought about it later on, I realized that even if I felt I didn’t need a follow up call, that good customer service goes a long way in making consumers feel that their concerns were truly met. This is a rest area I stop by often and it’s possible that I’d have started having some hesitancy in going there and giving them my business if I retained even a residual bit of distress from my previous visit. What he did was ease any issues I might have had with them a bit more; he even invited me to stop by to talk to him in person the next time I’m there.

How many of us feel that someone really cares enough to take care of our issues when we present them? How many of us will go out of our way to make those who interact with us feel better if they complain to us about something?
 

Copyright protected by Digiprove © 2011 Mitch  Mitchell

This weekend I went to a tweetup with some local folks just to get together and talk about the conference I just spoke at and to get together in person for awhile. It was a nice time, even if our group was smaller than normal. The next time anyone tells you that it’s easier to get people together in the fall rather than in the summer just stare at them and do whatever you wanted to do in the first place.

A few of us decided to go to dinner once things started breaking up so we took a short walk to a restaurant that’s gone through many different name changes over the years. It was busy, but then Friday nights are always busy. We had a guy whose name I don’t remember right now, and he was friendly, which most food servers these days will be.

I’ll own up to this; I tend to be a little fussy about my food. I don’t take a lot of chances with what I eat, and there are a lot of things I don’t remember as far as what certain foods are. I’m a straight up meat and potatoes guy; throw in something else and I’m going to question it.

So I went into my usual routine, asking questions about all sorts of things I had no knowledge of. However, I use humor to do it because I understand these folks have a tough go of it. I know they deal with some people who won’t even attempt to be gracious in their interactions with them. Some people are hard to please. Goodness I’m hard to please, but the waitstaff at restaurants can only control so much.

I always have a good time with people who bring me my food. I work on bringing a smile to their face so they’ll treat me right; that plus it’s the right thing to do. Some restaurants I go to often, and it’s always nice when they already know what I’m going to ask for. It shows I’ve made what’s hopefully a positive impression. And I try to remember their names as well, even though I’m usually bad at names, and they seem to appreciate that also.

People will treat you better if you treat them with respect. People who work for you and with you will react to what you have to say better if you treat them well. This isn’t a new principle, but it’s one I see so many people forget. When you get it into your mind that you’re entitled “just because”, you’ll ultimately fail in the long run, no matter what it is you do.

Think about how you treat others. If you’re not treating them as well as you could be, try something new; be nice. I’ll bet you get better responses, and positive feelings, and you’ll want to get that feeling as often as you can.
 

Copyright protected by Digiprove © 2011 Mitch  Mitchell

Last week I was in Las Vegas at a health care finance convention. I actually had a good time for once, and I know it had more to do with my mental outlook than anything else.

I’ve gone to this particular conference 10 of the last 12 years, and I just haven’t been feeling it after the first two. Still, I got to meet someone new every year, although it rarely translated into anything new.

However, on this particular trip I felt like I learned something. No, not from the conference, but from the people working at the casino. Let’s talk about it for a minute.

The Wynn is a different casino/hotel than what I’m used to experiencing from Vegas. I’ve been twice before, but this time I stayed in a luxury hotel. You could tell this was definitely new Vegas; things were expensive and lavish throughout. There were stores where the cheapest thing started at close to $10,000; ouch!

I can say that my start to being in the hotel wasn’t great. They didn’t have a room ready for me so I had to wait more than 4 hours before they got something for me to remove what my wife and I call “travel stink”; if you’ve flown across the country in a plane you know what I speak of. I was kind of miserable to say the least. Yet I tried making the best of it. I went to eat, walked around a bit, and sat down to play some poker.

Eventually I got a call saying there was a room ready for me. However, I then found myself waiting 25 minutes to get everything done that needed to be done, including my bags, which was the last thing to come. And I had to be in the room for all of it; ugh.

The first thing that happened is that there was this guy that worked at the hotel going into my room when I got there. He said he was told a light was out. He found out which one, fixed it, and I tipped him $5. He smiled big, then decided to show me how all the buttons worked, since you run all the electrical things, including drapes, from the panel I’m showing here. Then he mentioned some other things to me. I thanked him and he left.

The next guy that showed up came because there was no remote control in the room for some reason. He comes in, tries to get it to work, then determines there’s something wrong with the TV. He said he was going to get a maintenance guy for me. I gave him $5, and he thanked me and said he was going to make sure I was the first guy on the list. I then mentioned the snacks tray, where you paid not only if you opened anything but if you even took it out to look at it closely and it was gone for more than 30 seconds. I said it was pretty steep when all I wanted was some water. He said he’d take care of me, and within 2 minutes he’d brought me 6 bottles of water; nice!

The next person to show up was the guy working on the TV. I had my $5 ready for him up front and while he was working on it, we talked about how he’d like to go into business for himself one day, and since that’s what I do I figured I could maybe give him some pointers that I wish I’d heard when I went out on my own. I had hooked up my laptop and was trying to get everything working, but the batteries on my mouse had given out. He stopped and went to get me batteries, and gave me 3 boxed of double-A’s and one triple-A batteries; sweet!

The last guy that showed up was the guy bringing my bags; finally! He was friendly but, truthfully, I now had to go to the bathroom and really wanted to wash some funk off. Yet, once I tipped him his $5, he wanted to show me even more stuff with the room, which I really didn’t want until he showed me a couple of things I realized I might be able to use later.

I thought about it later on because that’s what I do. I realized that I gave out $20 in my room in less than 30 minutes. But I got 6 bottles of water, 4 boxes of batteries, and a lot of information and courtesy. Monetarily the water and batteries cost more than $20, so I made out there. But the information saved me possibly hours of confusion later on. How can one judge the cost of efficiency?

What does it cost to get that extra mile? In my case it cost $20, but I got way more than I had bargained for. Every industry or business will be different; it doesn’t always take money. Sometimes it just takes being nice; I’ll follow up with that story a little bit later. But think about it; what do you think you could get from someone by giving them a little more as well?
 

Copyright protected by Digiprove © 2011 Mitch  Mitchell

I have met very few people that haven’t complained about customer service at Best Buy. To say it’s horrible would be mincing words. On a post I recently wrote on my other blog, most of the people that commented had stories to tell about their bad customer service experiences while there; it’s not pretty.

I’m not sure if they really care or not. After all, the internet is replete with stories from people that have had bad customer relations there. I used to think that maybe there was a racial component to it because of the treatment I’ve gotten but now I realize it’s a corporate culture, one that stinks, and it’s everywhere, as I’ve been to the store in multiple cities and the same thing happens over and over.

Why keep going back? In many places it’s the only store in town that sells what one needs. Here in the Syracuse area all the other competing technology stores have gone bankrupt, so they’re the only choice, other than ordering stuff online. It’s possible you can find an item here and there at another store, but not the wealth of items they have all at once.

Still, I rarely go. On my last trip there about a month and a half ago I was so disgusted that I left the items there and went to Staples, luckily not only finding what I needed but at a slight discount; great lesson there.

But what if Best Buy decided they didn’t want to be derided for their bad behavior anymore? What if they wanted to fix it and get better? Here are 5 lessons they could employ that will work for many other companies as well:

1. Leadership training for the executive level. Bad customer service on such a consistent basis obviously starts at the top. This has to be a culture so removed from reality that they don’t know or don’t care that people literally hate them. If leaders don’t embrace change first, no one else will.

2. Leadership training for all other levels of management. This should come second, since we need to change the culture at the top first. These folks need to know how to better communicate with employees, motivate them, and show employees how they should behave.

3. Procedure training for management level employees. The excuses I often have received when asking why there’s no one to assist me is that someone’s on break or someone’s been assigned to a zone that they’re not allowed to leave. What the heck is that? If that’s Best Buy policy it needs to change, and then someone needs to train the managers better. If it’s management’s idea on how scheduling should be done they need to be taught better. Employees need cross training as well.

4. Make the person at the entrance more of a greeter than that person is now. Truthfully I’ve always seen that person as someone watching everyone when they leave to chase down shoplifters, and that’s probably more of what they are. Teach all greeters where everything is and have them ask customers when they come in what they’re looking for. Be true greeters; smile and be friendly and inviting. That will go a long way towards establishing a customer’s mood when they’re walking into the store.

5. More honest and informational sales people. I’m not saying they’re dishonest to the point of stealing but I can look back at when I bought my present computer and realize that the salesperson wasn’t totally up front with me on what I was buying. I was supposed to have a computer with a full media center, but it seems it needed more RAM and other things included in an upgraded model that they keep on the shelf. No one told me the computer on the counter that offered all the things didn’t have them, and thus I felt cheated, even if the other computer would have cost more. I figure that’s why you have more than one computer that you sell, so you can tell people all the options they will and won’t get, and the same probably goes for all your other appliances, software, hardware, phones, vacuum cleaners, washers and dryers, TVs, etc.

Okay Best Buy, take that list and start improving. If you need help, give me a call.

Copyright protected by Digiprove © 2011 Mitch  Mitchell

“The buck stops here.” – Harry Truman

Those are great words uttered by one of our former presidents, yet in a way it’s kind of unfair at the same time. I’m one of those people who believes management is responsible for a lot of how their employees behave while at work. I believe if customer service is lacking across the board that’s management’s problem. I believe if employees don’t fully understand the processes for the work they do that’s management problem. When it’s your problem it means you’re accountable for how those people do their job.

However, it’s not an absolute across the board. For instance, one would never blame any company if one of their employees turned out to be a serial killer. Someone might ask if anyone thought the person was odd, but other than that the corporation won’t take the blame for that.

But if an employee was skimming funds from a client’s account, that could be a much different issue. Many years ago when I was working someplace I kept looking at the books and thinking how efficient they were, but something didn’t quite add up. I mentioned it to the vice president of the company who said everything seemed in order and that particular office’s books and that they’d always looked like that. I never let go of that feeling, but I didn’t overly worry about it because of the vice president’s words.

Six months after I left that company, another employee noticed something one day that the manager of the office had done, called the vice president, and a full audit was conducted. It was discovered that the office manager had indeed been skimming funds from the client’s account for about four years. They came up with a workable solution and proceeded on from there, I felt somewhat vindicated because I knew something was wrong, and the client ended up none the wiser since the company resolved things without prosecution.

Blame and accountability are interesting concepts for both consumers and employers. Some consumers blame everyone in the company for their issues. I’m one of those people who knows that calling and yelling at customer service people for some reason makes no sense because those people had nothing to do with my concern. Other consumers aren’t always as sensible.

At the same time, some employers would rather blame everything on someone else rather than own up to either their own failing or the failing of the organization. Leadership that doesn’t support its employees until they investigate issues will find that every employee they get will be suspect of them and might not ever report when something is wrong, feeling they’ll get blamed for it. That kind of environment fosters problems that will be hard to overcome in the long run.

Management isn’t always accountable, but should act as if they are. It’s a much more honest way to do business, and their employees and customers will notice a world of difference.

Copyright protected by Digiprove © 2011 Mitch  Mitchell

A couple of night ago there was a guy who came to the house to inspect a window we’d had installed at the end of the year, supposedly just to make sure it was installed properly.

I had some minor issues with how everything was turning out. They might have just been my issues; after all, we all process information we’re given in our own way, and then we set our expectations based on that information. When our expectations don’t quite come true, we feel cheated and denied, especially if it came from a sales person, someone we often go into a relationship with not totally trusting what they’re going to tell us to begin with.

Anyway, the guy asked what we thought about the new window, so I expressed my opinion on it. His response to me was “Are you kidding? This is a great window; 12 million people can’t be wrong.”

I didn’t respond, but I almost said “Are you kidding? Of course 12 million people could be wrong.” How many people were in the wrong during both world wars? How many people are wrong in how they might condemn another religion? How many people were wrong with they wrote the original Constitution and decided black people were 3/5ths of a human? How many people were wrong in creating and supporting Jim Crow laws? How many people are wrong in Zimbabwe now as they try to erase their country of anyone who’s not dark skinned?

I could go on and on, but you see my point here. The majority isn’t always right; I say that one all the time. One of the most derided songs in history is Feelings by Albert Morris. Bring up that name to almost anyone who’s old enough and they’ll spit vitriol or laugh at his schmaltzy the song was. Yet that song went to number one and sold millions of copies at the time; how many people were wrong one way or the other?

I dealt with that same thing some months ago on this blog where someone who’d created a product wasn’t happy that I had written what he perceived was a negative review of it. He said on that post that tens of thousands of people had used it without a problem. I said that if it meant I was the only one so be it, but it didn’t work for me. Was I wrong even if I was the only person if it didn’t work for me but many others?

Yes, 12 million people could be wrong. Truthfully, 1 billion people could be wrong. Or one person could be wrong. Many times, the numbers don’t matter; the perception does. And as a sales person, this guy could have handled it differently. But he didn’t, and I left the room and let my wife handle things. Maybe I was wrong a second time; that’s okay, I’m not afraid of being wrong sometimes, millions or not.

Believe it or not, this is actually a customer service post, but it took an interesting turn. Let me explain.

On my other blog, I put out a post on a WordPress plugin that, unfortunately, didn’t work for me. I also stated that I couldn’t find any instructions on how to use it. For me, that was that; it was my review and out it went.

Within minutes I got a response on Twitter from the guy who created it. His statement was that I had changed the plugin somehow and that’s why it didn’t work. Thing is, I didn’t change anything; I had no idea, and still don’t, what any of the settings meant, and it would have been pretty stupid of me to go changing things without knowing what could happen.

He insisted I had changed things because he supposedly could see it. I said I hadn’t changed anything because I had no idea what to change, or why. He persisted, I said he was basically saying I was lying about what I’d done, and figured that was that; he even said so. He also stated that he didn’t have instructions, but he sent me a link to another blog where someone else had taken the time to write instructions on how to use his product.

I guess that wasn’t that. He came to my blog to state his case about his plugin. At that point I didn’t care about the plugin as much as his customer service response to me. I wrote this: “If a customer/client tells you they did or didn’t do something, you don’t go telling them they were incorrect; it just makes people mad. Doesn’t matter what you saw, it matters what their perception is, and trust me, sometimes it’s the truth, as is my case.”

He wrote back basically that he was done talking to me about it and at that point I figured I was done with him. Instead, he decided to write me an email, and he called it “The Race Card”, and said he was opening it up because black people are too sensitive about how they wanted to be treated. What the heck was that? Race jumps right into the conversation because I’m black (my image is on my site and on my Twitter profile) and I don’t like how I’m being treated?

We’ve gone back and forth on a few emails, and at this point I’m done for many reasons.

One, he seems to care more about my writing a negative review about his product than in seeing that he crossed a very dangerous line.

Two, he’s never even attempted to apologize for his statement, and said he wouldn’t apologize for his statement because, and I quote, “I will be participating in what I consider the counter-productive behavior (that I wish black people in my family and friends didn’t do as it’s been their undoing).” I don’t really even know what that statement is supposed to mean.

Three, he’s not American, he’s Italian, and he’s calling me out for being black and being sensitive and he doesn’t even live in the country?

And four, he starts telling me about black people he’s talked to that have thanked him for his service and asked him to be their mentor, while at the same time telling me black people are sensitive? At least he didn’t insult me with “I have black friends”, but why would I care about what some other black people may or may not have said to him at this point?

In my opinion, there were four major customer service faux pas’ that I see:

1. You never tell a consumer in public that they did something you have no proof that they did. Once I said I hadn’t changed anything, the conversation should have gone another way, but it didn’t.

2. You never go on the attack first. Unless your customer has done so first it’s not the proper course of action, and even then it might not be the best way to go. Now, if you’re accused of it and you don’t think your words were so harsh, look at them again; you might be missing something.

3. You never, and I mean NEVER, generalize about someone and their race, or something else. Never, and especially to their face. At that point, all discussions end and accusations go flying. Just because you think you’ve beaten me to the punch on the call of “racism” and now want to tell me how many other black people you’ve talked that you’ve had an easier time with and how many black friends you have (no, he didn’t do that) doesn’t get you off the hook for grouping me in with other people. We are all individuals, and we deserve to be treated as such.

4. An apology is always a great way to diffuse things, but of course if you just need to be right for the sake of being right so be it. Was I too sensitive? I don’t think so, but it’s possible. Still, it’s not always up to the consumer to be the one to notice when something’s gone down the wrong road first. Of course, just to add to this, he did state he doesn’t see me as a customer because he’s not making any money off it. Everyone’s a customer; thinking it only has to be about money is incorrect thinking.

Okay, your turn to share. And don’t give me any “black people are sensitive” stuff, or else we’ll have to battle on that one as well.