Awesome Customer Service

I've worked in customer service for nearly 20 years.  I've done it, I've trained it, I've supervised it.  It's not that hard.  It really boils down to "Be nice to people" or "Treat people the way you want to be treated".  So when I encounter exceptional customer service I feel the need to shout it out.   To me, exceptional customer service is going above and beyond.  It's not remembering to say thank you, or maintaining eye contact with me while we talk.  Too many people have come to accept those moments as the exceptions since as a society we have stopped expecting great customer service.

Applebee's here in Halifax gets my shout out for EXCEPTIONAL customer service.  Hilary and I took advantage of having rented a car last weekend to treat ourselves to some take out food from somewhere that we can't normally get when we are car-less.  Our order was fairly straight forward:  A burger and fries for Hilary and a salad with a side order of garlic mashed potatoes for me (cause garlic mashed potatoes ROCK).  I confirmed over the phone that it was an extra side of potatoes.  I confirmed again when I picked up the order that they had indeed rung in fries for Hilary and mashed potatoes for me.  They had.  I left a happy customer, dreaming of my mashed potatoes.

You know where this is going right?

When I got home and unpacked the food, the kitchen had gotten it wrong!  They had Hilary's burger with mashed potatoes and no fries were to be found. I called them to let them know and to vent some of my frustrations that the order was wrong after having checked it twice.  They offered to make a new serving of fries and I could go pick it up.  Thanks, but no thanks.  With gas prices these days, and the fact that it would take me another 20 minutes to get there and back, I wasn't willing to do that.  I didn't expect them to rush me over some fries, or really do anything, other then hear my complaint and maybe double check things for the next guy.

Instead I got transfered to the manager as the first person I spoke to was concerned that they couldn't solve my problem.  The manager was great.  He heard my concerns, he didn't make excuses, he tried to fix it.  And in the end he got my address so that he could send me something to say sorry that my dining experience with them was not exceptional.  

I never expected a gift certificate for $25.00 to make up for the fact that we were missing $2.99 fries!

Way to go Applebees!  That is some exceptional customer service!

A Black Hole

A black hole has opened up around me and is sucking out every dime, nickel, loonie and twoonie it can find.  We've had one of those weeks were the motto "if it can go wrong it will" is very apropos.  Here's a small list of big $$ things that have come up:

• Psychologist bill
• Liam needs new glasses (with a new prescription just 6 months after his last prescription change)
• The tenants toilet clogged and backed up in their tub.  On a Saturday.  After hours.  Liam really should be a plumber when he grows up since they charge a crap load to deal with, well a crap load!
• Not only did the plumber charge us for 4 hours of after hours Saturday work, he also told us that we will need to rip up the pipes that go from the house to the city's main pipe and have it replaced
• $200 + of flowers

$200+ for flowers?  Hardly seems like a necessity.  If money is tight just don't buy them.

Umm.. no kidding!

The problem is that I bought the flowers in November for my Grandmother's birthday.  And in November they cost $40.  Seemed reasonable.  I live in Nova Scotia and she lives in Ontario, so the easiest way to do this seemed to be on the internet.  So I found a site, they had a good deal, so I signed up and placed my order.  They were delivered on time and were lovely.  So when  Hilary's sister's birthday rolled around, we went back to that website to order from them again.  Only we couldn't remember our login name or password, so we signed up again.  We ordered another $40 of flowers and didn't look back.

If you have a keen reader's eye, you may have caught on already to the problem.  We had to "sign up" to this web site.  Somehow I missed what exactly I was signing up for.  I assumed (yeah yeah, I'm an ass) that they needed all of my info for billing purposes.  What I missed was that I was signing up for their "Reward" program.  Which was going to cost me $9.99 a month. 

Since I don't order flowers more then once or twice a year, I certainly don't need their "Reward" program.  I most definitely don't need it twice! 

When our credit card bill arrived yesterday I glanced at it and saw these 2 charges for $9.99.  And something clicked.  Hadn't I seen that on last month's statement?  What the heck was that for anyway?   Apparently I need to look at our credit card statement much more closely.  Once we pulled them out for the last few months we found that they all had these little $9.99 tucked in between our other monthly charges. 

D'Oh!

A call to their 800 # left me frustrated and even more angry.  I waited through 5 minutes of their advertisement only to be told that they were closed.  Great.  So now I have to find the time between 8:00 and 5:00 EST to call this company and get this sorted out.

You can bet that I'll be reading all fine print with a magnifying glass and a legalese dictionary at my side from now on!