Let’s talk about bad customer service. We all know what it looks like, because we’ve all encountered it at some point. But would we recognize it within our own organization?
A few weeks ago my wonderful boss gifted his managers with a Visa gift card for Christmas. As a treat, I decided that my boyfriend and I would use it to take ourselves out for a fancy meal that we would not otherwise indulge ourselves on. Out we went, dressed to the nines, ready to have the best meal of our lives. And boy, was it fantastic. We wined and dined and when we received the check, I placed the Visa gift card down to cover the majority of the bill. Imagine our surprise when our waitress (let’s call her Jane), who hadn’t been overly impressive the whole night, bluntly told us that they don’t accept Visa gift cards…
What??
Now, in Jane’s defense, she can’t magically make a five star restaurant’s computer suddenly start taking Visa gift cards. We were blindsided and in no mood to start washing dishes for our meal. It’s at this part of the story where the vital breaking point in any service organization is: what do you do in that moment? I know we can all come up with plenty of “pretty” answers that sound great on paper (like giving us our meal for free or giving us a gift card for the restaurant), but what really happens in these moments? Jane dropped the ball. She blankly stared at us after telling us that they don’t accept Visa gift cards and asked us “So how do you want to pay for this?” Yikes.
I’ve included this little caveat every time I’ve told this story to someone — it’s not about the money. It’s about so much more than that. Jane was completely oblivious to the fact that she dropped the ball. So my question to all of us is this — where do we not see that we’re dropping the ball? Where are our Janes? Unfortunately for the restaurant, I’ve told this story to most of my friends and colleagues and warned them against going there. This story actually made it back to their manager through a friend of mine. His response was “Our computers just don’t recognize Visa gift cards.” Would you be willing to settle for that and let it be the end of the story?
Look at every step of the process, look at every level of the system, look at every employee and find out where the end of the story is. If you don’t, your customers will.
Amanda Purser is the front desk manager at Gainesville Health & Fitness. She can be reached at APurser@ghfc.com.
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Rachel Zabonick-Chonko is the editor-in-chief of Club Solutions Magazine. She can be reached at rachel@peakemedia.com.
