Customer Service

I am an avid fan of Jennifer Lancaster, the author and late night online purchaser, who lives in the Chicago area. I read her blog, her books, and have her on my facebook. She posted a link today to one of the people she reads and this link was an open letter to a food delivery company called Flavor 180. Now, living in a rural-ish area of Maryland we don't have large food delivery services. We have pizza delivery and Chinese delivery and believe it or not we have Sushi delivery! LOL! I KNOW! Right?! But that is the latest enterprise in our lovely mountain 'berg. I hope it does well. I really like it when something new and NOT PIZZA opens up in town.
However, I digress, I am aware of how things in a large city work (I used to order food when we lived in the Baltimore area all the time.)
So this woman, Gina, who is an online blogger and from what I gather, rather a big name in media, tried 3 times with this company called Flavor 180 to get food. Please click here to get to her letter.
I will let you read her letter and not go on about it here, but I will also like to talk about customer service.
Those of you who know me, know I manage a movie theater in my town. You also know that I am quite talkative and have a habit of being very friendly when tranacting (is that a verb) with customers.
I have had moments of customer service faux pas over the years. Some customers have found me offensive and not funny, as my intent surely was at the time. However, I did have one really blatant bad customer service moment. It was not excusable, despite the fact that the Frostburg State University student was horrible and deserved it, I was the manager and I should have been professional.
Now, I am all for understanding when customers are complete assholes and deserve what they get, but still, as far as customer service goes, you strive to be excellent, or at least you should.
I want customers to think of my little theater as the friendly place where we know your name, or at least how you like your popcorn! Customer Service is my number one priority as I tell my employees, to make sure when a customer has two movies they want to see, our wonderful service will help them decide to come to our theater and not the other one.
I also feel for cashiers in shops where the customer in front of me is a total ass. That poor cashier can't tell them off, not if they want to keep their jobs, so I like to butt in and tell them off. Since I am just in line, I am a customer and can say whatever I like. Or when it's my time, I like to say that things that I KNOW that cashier must be thinking. Make them smile, let them know that Yes, indeed, we all saw that asshole and know they are an asshole.
Have I ever been a customer from hell? OF COURSE! Who hasn't? They has been a time in everyone's lives when we were irritated by a cashier, or person that is supposed to be helping us and they are not. We act the fool and then storm out of the shop. "Yeah, that will teach them, we think to ourselves" but it doesn't, they just think, what an asshole and move on.
Bad customers upset my employees a lot. Since we are a small theater with a small staff, the kids take it personally when some moron gives them crap because the movie sucked.
I would love to say "Oh yes, since my employee was the director of that film, she is very sorry you hated it." But that would be bad customer service. I try to deflect that kind of barrage, I tell my employees that they are paid minimum wage and thus do not make enough to have to listen to that crap, but I am salaried and am paid to listen to it.
When something unfortunate happens in a customer service situation, as the manager, you try to smooth it out.
Recently, I had such a situation. I was, I thought, making a little tease to one of the customers buying a ticket but they did not take it that way and it was blown up into some rediculously large situation. To the point of a phone call from a relative of the customer.
I simply appoogized to the customers that were with that customer when they complained. Explained that offending them was not my intention. However, that didn't seem to do it, so the phone call came in, I again appologized. This time, I believe that it was accepted.
An illustration of a bad customer service moment rescued? I do hope, however, you never can tell.
I have been at my theater since 1999 but took a sabatical, if you will, for 2.5 years. While I was gone from my theater an incident took place that I will bring up here because it is a perfect example of bad customer service.
It was during Brokeback Mountain and the manager was on the box office window selling tickets. A man came up to buy a ticket to Brokeback Mountain and evidently this movie was long and he was the only one that was buying a ticket to that film. Now, to understand, sometimes at my little theater will show a movie that is super long while the other movies are short. So if one person shows up for the long one, you will be at the theater for the extra hour waiting for that movie to get out. However, as I feel, if you want to see a movie, then you should see it. Whether or not you are the only one in there and I have to wait, and wait and wait some more after I am done all my work for the movie to get out. After all, we are getting paid to wait. Not too shabby, I think! However, this manager I am writing about thought it way shabby evidently. While this customer was asking for a ticket to Brokeback, there was another customer waiting behind them to buy thier ticket.
What I heard was the following: The Manager was reluctant to sell the ticket, so much so, she was telling the customer that he was the only one in there. Words were exchanged back and forth and when the ticket was finally sold to the customer, the manager wads up the change, throws it through the window at the customer and says, enjoy your movie, one of them dies.
WOW!
Really, this is what happened. I do know, because the customer that was behind this poor customer happened to be friends with my ex-assistant who told him about it after she walked away and didn't bother to buy her ticket. I was all the way in Memphis, TN at the time, but got the email. Along with that email, I got the word that I was BADLY missed at the theater and my old customers wanted to know if I would be coming back!
I bet!
When I did finally return, I found several letters writting in to complain about one bad service or another.
My first act as the manager once again was to write to all the letter writters to let them know I had returned and offer them free passes to come back and try us again.
All but 2 of these passes were used.
Then one night about a year after I returned I met two customers that SWORE they would never return after thier nightmare with that interum manager. They told me that they had come to see a movie with thier child and while in the theater the child became ill and vomited. They had to leave, of course, and appologized to the manager for the vomit. She handed them a mop.
(Pausing here for you to re-read that statement. It's not a typo.)
Yes, they were handed a mop.
I was livid and speechless. The woman said to me, yea, how you look is exactly how I felt at the time.
I appologized to them for being treated like that.
She says to me not to appologize, I had nothing to do with that incident.
Still, I felt awful that THAT had happened to them.
I assured them they would NEVER be treated like that again. After their movie was over, I gave them some passes to use for them and their family.
They were very grateful and more grateful that I was manager there again and not that other person. They said they would tell all their friends they could lift the boycott of the cinemas.
Needless to say, customer service is very important and giving great customer service should be priority number one for every business.
So next time you are having a bad day, remember not to take it out on your customers or on that unsuspecting cashier who is only doing her job.
(And if you hate the movie, send an email to the Distributor, don't yell at the usher cleaning up the theater.)