Giving Teeth to Good Customer Service
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Dec 28, 2011
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.
I also don’t like to write bad reviews and negative testimonials until recently, but from what I am getting recently I feel pretty disappointed. Unfortunately most people read a review when they are already disappointed and not before that. Recently I was very disappointed from the fact that I can’t do anything to get out of this situation and I think this is something that happens all over the world right now, as we are living with Internet age and our laws seems to be a bit outdated. To make long story short – I’ve ordered a device from online shop, about 55% discount, however when the device arrive, I was asked to pay 85% duty tax of the total value (total value include shipping cost, too). I tried to dig deeper and check why the tax is that high, as a matter of fact I have to pay VAT twice, tax on express shipping, tax because device is plastic, tax because it is made outside of the country and tax on total weight, actually few other things. Well, I refused to accept the parcel and returned to the sender. Other that my disappointment, I guess this was a perfect example why economy is in this situation, this is killing trading, small online businesses and I definitely cant give positive review to this particular shop which didn’t stated that I have to pay 85% import duty tax.
Carl, I’m not sure what to say about this one. Government doesn’t always worry about customer service and that doesn’t seem to be your issue anyway. One can only hope that you’ll find ways to work this type of issue out.
Update on this one, I was communicating with other customers of this shop, it thought it is the government, but actually it isn’t. I was buying from this particular shop for several years and everything was sweet, however recently they have started getting “too smart”. The customer pay for shipping on check out, however the same shop ships the items with pay on delivery, so customer pay for something which is already paid. That’s why it looks like it is 85% duty tax, which is technically around 30% which is fair.
As an American, I’d rate customers service high in the UK. I’ve visited there about 7 or 8 times. My wife has family and friends there near Liverpool. My sister lives in London.
The thing I like about customer service in the UK is that they speak kindly and sensitively to you. They are not abrupt. This, I have observed, is true whether the customer is an American or a UK citizen themselves. There just seems to be more congeniality in general between people, including in customer service situations.
There is sympathy for customer problems that come up. Once I had an automobile problem in Wales, when I ran into a curb by accident because I wasn’t used to driving on the wrong side of the car, let alone the wrong side of the road. The mechanics apologized for their left-handed approach to motoring.
Also, I find that above any other country in the world that I know, the UK British have the greatest sense of humor and wit. This skill comes in handy in the customer relations category for sure. The British are good at keeping the stiff upper lip, as they say, and that includes injecting a little humor into an otherwise hopeless situation to help all of us carry on, in this life, through thick and thin.
If I ever make it to the UK I hope to experience their customer service. Overall I think customer service in the states is okay, but often it’s not overwhelming and here and there you run into situations where people don’t care. I truly believe customer service is one of those things where it starts at the top and goes down, and I was really impressed that the upper level of this organization stepped up to the plate; totally unexpected I must admit.