(originally published April 3rd, 2005)

Last week my wife and I went to a restaurant we hadn’t been to in awhile, mainly because we hadn’t thought about it. It’s part of a national chain, and I’ll add that it serves pizza; I’m not going any further than that.

Everything seemed to be going along fine, as we’d had some salad and some garlic bread. Finally the pizza came, and immediately our eyes widened, not out of anticipation, but because of how it looked. It looked,… well, incomplete. There wasn’t cheese all over the pizza as I was used to over 30 years. There was a slightly odd smell about it also; my wife said it reminded her of spoiled milk. Still, we each took a slice, hesitantly, and cut into the first piece. It didn’t seem like it had been cooked thoroughly, but both of us being troopers, we put the first piece in our mouths. It was off; that’s the best description I can give you, and my wife agreed.

Eventually the waitress showed up, and we told her that something was wrong with the pizza, and we couldn’t eat it. She apologized and said she’d get the manager. About 3 minutes later, she came back, and instead of the manager, they had taken the entire pizza off the bill, and only charged us for the garlic bread.

I was left wondering whether we had gotten good customer service or not. While it was great that they had taken the pizza off, we didn’t get to talk to the manager, no one offered to make us another pizza (we were asked if we wanted to take the one we had), and when we got to the front the cashier asked us if everything was satisfactory with our meal; that was awkward.

I’m thinking something else probably should have happened. I’m thinking that someone should have asked us more questions. I’m thinking that someone should have checked into what our complaint was, whether something was bad. While we were at the cashier, I was smelling something else bad that was cooking, smelling spoiled; that proved to me that it wasn’t just my pizza. Someone should have offered us a coupon for another visit later on. Or something; I’m just not sure.

I tend to believe that if a customer has a complaint and you didn’t attempt to resolve it to their satisfaction, that you probably haven’t provided good customer service. They may leave mad anyway, but at least you migh thave learned something that will benefit you in the long run. All this restaurant learned from us was that, this time at least, we didn’t eat the pizza.