Here’s what happened to me this past weekend:
I went to a local coffee house this past weekend and brought a friend along who really hadn’t gone there before, preferring, instead, to go to Starbucks. Now, when I order, I usually go for a medium sized soy chai latte, so, in ordering my friend’s very basic “House” I just repeated what he told me, “Vente House.”
Before I got out the rest of the order I was told by a rather indignant young girl, “We don’t have that size here.” I just looked at her while wondering what I had done to create such a response. “I’m sorry, I don’t…” “We don’t have sizes like that,” said she while sticking her thumb up towards three paper cups with indiscernible magic marker words. “Those are our sizes.”
Then I realized what happened in repeating the order my friend gave me. “Oh, excuse me, you see…,” I tried to explain. She rolled her eyes. “Now, what do you want?” I have to say that I started to really get irritated at this point as I endured more eye-rolling from this fresh face with what appeared to be black spikes coming down from her nostrils, a less-than-appealing countenance for a food service-related position.
I took one-half step away from the counter and said, “I come here about three times a week…” She rolled her eyes again and said, “I asked you what you wanted.” “Nothing, absolutely nothing from you.” I responded. And then my friend and I walked across the street to Starbucks. I have to admit, before I even got the order out, the barista already was asking what sizes. Instead of their term for medium for my latte, I said medium, and I was neither scorned nor treated as a street urchin. We were greeted by smiles and given excellent service.
The first place I went to was a spot that I and my neighbors have used as a Saturday morning meeting place for well over three years – a place I have been a loyal customer to since its original opening years before that.
We are berated if we go into a Starbucks since they are owned “out-of-town,” yet they employ locals and provide great customer service. I choose good service over bad.
What’s your impression of what good customer service is?
4 comments
Comments feed for this article
October 26, 2009 at 2:21 am
rodgerswrites
Here’s an example -
“Treating me with respect.”
October 26, 2009 at 2:02 pm
colleen august
Basically it’s satisfying the customer as long as the customer is not treating you badly. Respect of course and information and help with what they need. But in order to give good customer service, a customer must make their needs known or we in sales can’t help them, if we were mind readers, we would all be rich! I’ve been in sales for decades and I think I am an example of one of the most customer service oriented sales people out there. BUT – no one gets paid to be cursed at either …. so as long as a customer is polite, I will go above and beyond to do anything that they need. Actually there are very few abusive customers, we just tend to remember them because they are so rude.
December 31, 2009 at 11:08 pm
Alex@qqquuu
Small thing, like smiling to the costumer, and say ‘thank you for coming to this supermarket’ and treat them politely and give them an appropriate answer not just “thanks for the critique. we will considered it.” Regards, Alex
January 23, 2010 at 3:31 pm
Fredy Marroquin-Rodriguez
Your story is not an uncommon one. All of North America decided during the 70s and 80s to do away with manners and pleasantries which made society function smoothly. What you experienced is the result of 30 some years of people being trained to treat each other with absolute disregard. Expect more of this as the children who have grown up in the 90s and 00s begin to grow up and run our world. Think about this… the next 2 coming generations are great at multi tasking, learning new technology, etc. etc. but they HATE people.