CSI - Lose my trust, lose my business?

On Saturday, I was convinced to stop by a fast food place that had a special deal. Fair disclosure requires me to say that I stop by fast food places about 10 times a week. What was different about this stop was the way they pulled their deal off the table.

I can live with a company getting overwhelmed by a deal or running out of an offer and making adjustments. The jury is still out on the long term effects of this oops as I wait for my KFC coupon. What I find amazing was that the other place pulled the Saturday deal and offered no alternatives. That makes me question your integrity. Once I am not sure that I can trust what you say, how can your advertising be anything but a waste of time and money. It's like that Lucy & Charlie Brown thing with the football.

When one of the little Unsorted Thinkers calls you out, you know that your organization has done wrong.

This leads me to the following simple suggestions from my customer service days.

• If there is a special deal, make sure the staff know about it and how to process it in your POS system.
  
  
• If you run into a problem, e.g. run out of the special--identify an alternative
  
  
• Share the alternative with the staff...along with how to process it in the POS system.

It's really not that tricky.

Soon, we will touch on another CSI that came up at the same franchise (different shop.) It almost made my my jaw hit the floor because it was just that unbelievable. I will make an adjustment to some of my fast food patterns now that I know...I just cannot trust some places.

CSI - Deal or No Deal

This blog is not about a television obsession. It is about a CSI - customer service investigation.

A friend of mine had a blog recently about companies failing us. While not every business situation is an honest transaction, most are legitimate. It made me think about many of the inside parts of customer service. Lately you will see all sorts of special deals--buy a car, get one free; lose your job and we make the payments; fill out a bunch of surveys and get something free; kids eat free.

You have to check the fine print. Companies want to make money and keep people coming to the business. Usually there are all sorts of rules that limit their exposure on these deals. Don't get mad at them because they cannot afford to give you entirely free stuff. Make sure that you understand the rules and can live with them.

The other day, I was in a fast food place that listed a discount on a kids meal. The fine print was that you had to buy a non breakfast value meal. That works fine for me and the kid. However, the employee rang up the kid's meal at regular price. I objected and referred him to the sign in the window. The claim was that the deal had not started yet. (Not so--I read the fine print first.) We called in a manager and the discount was applied.

Unfortunately, the employee was not current on how to ring up the discount with these modern/advanced cash registers. Long ago, they punched in prices--nowdays, the employee has to put in the correctly coded sequence to make the right price appear. I don't blame the guy for not knowing how to key the discount, but I do hold him responsible for trying to fake his way through the error instead of asking the manager for help.

Caveat emptor - buyer beware. Make sure you know the fine print to the deal. If you do, it is easy to determine if you want the deal. Maybe you don't like the deal, but a better one might be available if you ask for it. We'' save that for another CSI blogisode.

More CSI to come.

I can't get no...satisfaction?

The other day, I was in a fast food business that focuses on chicken. There was a customer who was not happy with her order. She explained that it was not done enough for her. As the issue was handed over to the shift manager, she checked the chicken. The shift manager explained that the chicken was fully cooked and she had cooked it herself.

The customer wanted another order. The shift manager explained how she cooked the chicken for the required time and that all of the chicken was similarly prepared. She offered to refund the customer's money. The customer insisted that she wanted another order of chicken. The manager gave her the option of a refund or keeping her original order.

I was very interested in this exchange, because of that old (false and incomplete) adage--the customer is always right. While the customer is always right about his/her expectations, that does not change the reality of the business. Unless the manager believed this was a bad piece of chicken, giving away more of the same doesn't make the customer happy, it just makes the restaurant less profitable. Good for the shift manager.

All customer satisfaction is not equal. In some cases what we expect is not even close in different industries. The average level of service we expect from the cable company is far different than our expectations from an internet retailer.

Before you paint me with the "doesn't get customer satisfaction" brush. let me say that it is important to deliver a high level of service to your customers. Doing so should get you more business if you understand how to make their experience a memorable one.

However, if your best is not good enough for them, you have to make a business decision. Are we going to get better or do we believe our level of accomplishment is good enough? If you have no plans to get better, target customers that like your level of accomplishment and quickly get the others out of your business.

It is better to not have customers that you will not satisfy, than to keep them around. The more they show up, the more your happy customers start to wonder if their level of approval is appropriate.