Customer Service

Why is good customer service so hard to come by these days?

Okay, there are still some places where I have been getting good customer service. My local McDonald’s is staffed by some incredibly nice people who probably know me by name by now … or at least can identify me by my car … and they’ve been giving me pretty good service, save for the occasional mix-up where I’ve gotten a vanilla McCafe shake instead of a chocolate one, but that’s no biggie. But elsewhere around here? Not anywhere near the same amount of service.

Seems like many of the places around here are stocked by people whose give-a-damn is broken but who still expect the customer to be nice to them and even tip them although they provide no service that would be worth a tip, save for the non-monetary kind, such as – “Here’s a tip: provide some customer service if you want me to give you extra money for it.” Remember, kids, the definition of a “tip” is a “sum of money as reward for their services.” It’s a reward. Not an entitlement.

But I digress.

There are a few places locally that have done an overall worse job than others recently, so I’d just like to mention them.

The first is our newly opened Dunkin’ Donuts. It’s been open for less than two months and service is already complete crap. We’ve stopped in once so far and probably won’t be going back anytime soon. Aside from the fact that the place looked like it hadn’t been cleaned since the day before, with straw wrappers and other debris littering the floor, the staff made an equally bad impression in unwashed, wrinkled, stained white shirts, bad tattoos showing on their necks and arms (even in areas where they could have been covered, were they to wear their shirt sleeves down), and very slow, unfriendly service.

The second one is our local Brigade Quartermaster store on base. I went in there with the express purpose of buying a pair of boots. Walking in, I was the only customer. Yet the store clerk was, of course, nowhere to be found to be asked a question. When I finally did find her to ask whether they are able to get the boots in black (so I could wear them for both Civil Air Patrol and at the Rescue Squad) rather than the standard tan, the employee seemed put out that I’d asked her such a difficult question and suggested I Google it, she didn’t know. The rest of the interaction with her wasn’t any more pleasant … like when I stood at the register ready to check out and she was yakking it up with an employee from one of the other stores by the door, completely ignoring me.

Incidentally, I’ve noticed that male soldiers going to this store never get this sort of brush-off treatment I got from the (female) staff in there. Makes me wonder if they work there looking for a date. Or a hubby. At any rate, I wound up complaining to corporate about that particular shopping experience and got a nice email back telling me they’d given both the employee and the manager some additional training. (Whatever that means.)

My latest bad customer service experience was at the local Pizza Hut, which has been offering a $10 for any pizza, any size if you selected takeout instead of delivery. Hubby and I ordered a large Hawaiian, which is our default pizza order, and headed over there to pick it up. We were helped quickly by one of the teenagers working there who brought out our pizza, showed it to us to ensure it was the right thing, and then informed us that the woman at the other register (the “takeout register”) would check us out as soon as she was done.

The woman at the other register was identified by her name tag as the General Manager and she was the only person in the store who didn’t look neatly dressed and groomed. Her hair was disheveled and both her apron and Pizza Hut shirt were wrinkly, stained, and dirty. Not a very good impression from the person who’s supposed to be the manager, especially considering that all the teens working there were well-put-together! Not only that, but she was on the phone. For the next eight minutes! Around minute five, hubby was wondering whether we should be going to Stefano’s (the local Italian joint) instead but I suggested that since we were already here and the $10 pizza was a good deal (and usually very good), we should just wait.

When the Manager got off the phone, she offered no apology at all, not even a quick, “I’m sorry for the wait.” She just started to ring us up. As I handed her the money, I couldn’t help but commenting that “The pizza is probably cold by now.” Instead of apologizing, the Manager said, “Why’s that? Oh… because I was on the phone so long? I can only do one thing at a time.” Which sounded a whole lot like, “Go fuck yourself. I’m the manager and if you don’t want to wait, don’t fucking eat here.”

Needless to say, corporate got an email about that one, too. And I’ll be recommending to my friends on both the rescue squad and both fire departments to order their pizza someplace other than Pizza Hut – thankfully, we do have other pizza options right in town, too.

Have you recently dealt with bad customer service? How did you handle it?

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