Maybe There's Hope for Customer Service

One of the reasons I started this blog was a place to vent.  Sometimes about stupid thing or frustrating sports teams, but often about bad customer service.  And part of why I invested in a restaurant many years ago is I was so disappointed with the terrible service in restaurants that I felt if you could actually run a place with a brain and treat customers well, you'd succeed.

Monica have had some unbelievably bad experiences with people attempting to render customer services. Too many to list but here are a few examples.  Monica ordered a hamburger without the sauce that usually comes on it.  When it came with sauce she sent it back and they wiped the sauce off the bun and sent it back to her.  We checked into a hotel and they gave us a key to the wrong room -- a room where someone was already checked in and Monica walked in on the couple.  Fortunately they were sitting on the bed watching TV.  And recently we tried out new house cleaners.  You'd think people would want to make a good first impression to win your business.  They called to say they'd be there between 2 and 3; that's a big range but OK.  At 3:30 they called to say they were leaving Mercer Island and they arrived about 4 PM.  I understand some technicians (plumber, electrician, computer repairman) could have a job be larger than they expected and run late.  But how does a house cleaning job blow up and run over by two hours.  We needed the house cleaned, but these people were "fired" before they ever started.

However, I'm glad to say that we've seen a few examples of good customer service of late which somewhat restores my faith in humanity.


(I thought I wrote about this before but can't find it.)  Monica and I dined at Ruth's Chris Steak House in January.  While nothing was so bad that we were really upset or I asked for a manager, we weren't exactly wowed the way we should be for fine dining.  The only real problem was that Monica's fillet was undercooked then when they "fixed" it, the butter sauce made for a very crispy outside.  I know from experience it's tricky to cook beef exactly right, but when you have "Steak" in your name you should get a steak right 95% of the time.  Other things were minor and fixed as best they could at the time. 
However, on the way home it dawned on us that they had problems with our table, our drinks, our salad, Monica's steak, and dessert.  I send a nice but unhappy letter to the general manager to let them know about our experience.  I got a phone call from the GM two days later who invited us to return on the house, much more than I asked for.  Awesome.

And just this week. Expedia has a new "Priceline-like" feature where they'll sell you a discounted hotel without revealing its name.  The downside is you don't know exactly which hotel you get and you can't cancel or change the reservation.  I booked two rooms for our upcoming trip to Vancouver using this process.  In reviewing my confirmation, I noticed that somehow the date got entered as 9/11 which is not what I needed. I called Expedia to ask if there was anything they could do since it was human error -- and I wasn't trying to beat the discount system.  The customer rep called the hotel and they were gracious enough to cancel my reservation and refund a non-refundable payment.  I'm not a once a month traveler, but I do use Expedia several times a year and they now have a very happy customer.

Monica made a massage appointment next door to the place where she works out and told the front desk person, who may be the manager, that she'd be coming from a workout.  She'd done this before and it wasn't a problem.  When she arrived, she apologized for being sweaty, and her massage therapist made some sort of snide remark about it.  Monica decided to walk out since the guy apparently wasn't comfortable giving her a massage.  At first I saw his side, but as I think about it, when I got for a massage they suggest I use the steam room or sauna first, so many people come a bit hot and sweaty.  Anyway Monica told the front desk what happened at left.  Later that night, Monica got an email from the manager apologizing for what happened, letting her know that therapist was no longer employed, and offering her a free massage if she'd like to come back.  I think that's more than they needed to do, but they turned Monica from someone who will never come back and tell horror stories about the place into a likely regular customer... and one who will bring friends.  And it cost them the price of one massage.