This is a tale of customer service good and customer service bad. I pay attention to customer service for two reasons. First, I'm a customer and I matter. I decide where to spend my money and part of the decision is customer service. If someone has something I want but they have terrible service I go somewhere else. If someone has great service I will go out of the way to go there again. Second, part of my job is teaching all our new hires which includes teaching our company's philosophy on customer service. I want to be sure our people get a good start in their careers with our company and I will use stories like the following as an example of good and bad.
So, here's the story.
McDonalds #1. The McDonalds near my house used to get my business frequently in the morning as I'd drive thru and get a sandwich and large ice tea. But they started charging more for the tea and sandwiches then other McDs and made frequent mistakes so I quit going there and sent an email to corporate letting them know I felt the drive thru service was lacking. After a while I decided to give them a try again and it was OK for a while then mistakes started happening again. Yesterday I ordered the bagel with bacon,egg,cheese to treat myself. It's the more expensive sandwich. I should note I don't get their sausage ever because its greasy and salty and doesn't get along well with my gut. So, back to the story. After I got on the road and part way to work I opened the sandwich to find the least expensive sandwich - an egg mcmuffin with sausage.
So, when I got to work I decided to send a nicely worded email to corporate saying how my service was lacking and I ended up not only paying for the expensive sandwich but got one that I couldn't eat all of (dumped the sausage). I not only wanted to let them know but also (secretly) figured they'd send me a coupon or something to make up for the money I paid them without get what I paid for.
I got a quick "we got your email" response and then today I got an email basically saying they talked to the store immediately and were sorry about my experience, etc but nothing about compensating me for the money I spent without getting what I wanted. No coupon, no nothing. Makes me feel cheated probably because I was!
McDonalds #2. The McDonalds near work. I stop by this one about once a year. I was heading toward a meeting and didn't have time for lunch so I did the drive thru to get ice tea and a wrap to eat in the car on the way. They took a little while (but really not very long) to get the wrap to me and to thank me for being patience gave me a $1.00 coupon for my next visit. Everything was good. The wrap well made and tasty but they wanted me to know that they valued my business and were sorry about the extra 2 minutes it took.
Now - which McDonalds would you rather go to? Customer Service is a really important thing and until people in the service industries really figure this out the only way we can show them is by thanking people for their good service with out business and by telling them we appreciate their hard work.
As for the McDs by my house. They won't be seeing me for quite a while. Why should I pay for something I don't get!
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