I’ve learned that when the goal of great service is a big part of your business, after awhile the entire team slowly but surely becomes completely resentful of bad service they receive elsewhere. I can’t tell you the number of times a member of the team has said, You know, Jean, before I worked here I never noticed bad service but now I find myself biting my tongue all the time when I receive lousy customer service!”.
Last Friday Andrea stormed into my office around 12:30 and told me that she’d gone for her usual Friday pizza lunch, and they first undercooked and then burned her Honolulu slice and when she said that she simply had no more time to wait, the owner (the franchisee) said, well, do you want your money back? To which Andrea replied, it’s really not about the money, I come here every week! And he shrugged and said words to the effect of “Okay then I’ll keep your money”.
So today – one week later- I went over to the pizza place just to see for myself what was up (everyone on the team is always complaining about that location’s service) and sure enough the service was atrocious, although the person who had interacted with Andrea didn’t appear to be there. The only fun part of the expedition was then emailing Andrea: