It's not safe to rant on the government now. I don't think it's safe to rant on the media either. The topic of customer service, however, stirs more emotion in me than the first two combined. In that spirit, it's rant time.
Today, I had a real "Fiji day". I don't know if people who are from Fiji actually experience "Fiji days" but I suspect they do, even though they may live through them without ever implementing a fancy designation like mine. To me, a "Fiji day" is a day where very little works as expected. Before anyone attacks me for being an inconsiderate and overacting foreigner, I need to clarify that "Fiji days" don't automatically represent a negative experience. On the contrary, some of my "Fiji days" signify the best times I've ever had in the country. In that light, a "Fiji day" is simply a day that could only happen here.
Unfortunately, today was one of those negative "Fiji days". Here's my story about one of the hours...
It really all boils down to customer service.
Customer service is, in my opinion, the easiest part of running a business. It's also the most fun when done right. It feels so good to build a customer for life. In the years I've been living here, however, I have bashed my head repeatedly against the wall when faced with some of the worst customer experiences of my life. Realistically, I have these unfortunate business interactions a few times a week and I am not exaggerating. I am referencing actual customer experiences that I could easily document if I thought I could survive the cardiac strain of repeatedly capturing them to paper (or blog).
Today's lunch hour turned out to be...well...sad.
A friend and I chose to go out to a certain restaurant to have lunch. I won't name the restaurant at this point because it's not very important. It's the experience that matters.
I eat at this restaurant a few times a month with my family as well as other times with colleagues and friends. Since there aren't tons of decent lunch choices in Suva with parking, convenience and other niceties, this particular place rated pretty high, if not a bit expensive. The prices, however, are the trade-off for convenience and their sandwiches are pretty good too.
When we were seated, I quickly noticed their menu had been changed in the past week or so. The prices had all raised by a few dollars. A sandwich with fries, for example, now cost about $13. That's a lot of money for lunch in Suva compared to other options. We had already been seated and the pricing alone wasn't enough to drive me away and as I wrote, I like their sandwiches so we ordered.
I noticed some other changes as the waitress took our order. Clearly, she had recently been "trained". I'm using quotations around that word because there is training and then there is training. This woman had been taught to regurgitate a script of questions in order to try and upsell customers. In the larger scheme of things, this is not necessarily a bad thing but it kind of felt as if a robot was taking our order. No matter.
"Would you like to have some dipping sauce with your meal?" she asked."Sure." My friend said. "Thanks."
When our orders came, the food looked great.
"Can I get some ketchup, please?" I asked."Oh, I'm sorry. We're out of ketchup."
Call me petty. Call me childish. Call me impatient.
I am simply unable to fathom how any restaurant like this could be out of ketchup. I guess I'm thinking that if I'm going to pay $13 for a sandwich and fries, I'll get one of the world's most standard condiments along with it. No, apparently. Not today.
"You're out of ketchup?" I asked, incredulous, hoping that I misheard and she was actually asking me whether I wanted to go out and catch up. No such luck. Not today.
Is it worth mentioning that there is an enormous supermarket not 50 meters away? Is it worth mentioning that there is a smaller market which sells ketchup just 10 meters away? No...that would have been too much. My Fijian friend who I was eating with began rolling her eyes at me.
Sic vita est. Such is life. I backed down.
We had our meal and it was good but as we both sat there with a plate full of fries and no ketchup to dip them into, I know my friend felt it too. Damnit, we deserved that ketchup but instead settled for the dipping sauce as a substitute and frankly, it just didn't cut the mustard (if I may be so bold as to reference another condiment every restaurant should have). As a number of unsuspecting customers who also wouldn't be enjoying ketchup with their meals walked into the restaurant, I did some math in my head. I determined that I probably spend around $140 per month in that place. Taking the family here has gotten more expensive as the kids have grown. If they stayed small, expenses would remain reasonable but that's another rant better left for another time. $140 per month by 12 months is $1,680 per year.
At the end of our meal, my friend announced she would be shouting lunch. We walked up to the front to pay our cheque and noticed that the dipping sauce, so efficiently upsold by our waitress at the start of the meal, was on our bill. They were charging us $1.60 for an amount of unnamed sauce no larger than a teaspoon of mayonnaise.
[INTERMISSION: I'll stop there for a second because it's important for me to note that although I'm naturally a sarcastic person and might be enhancing this story just a bit for effect, everything here is entirely true and took place. This blog post is about customer service and for the record, I haven't even gotten to this customer service part of this story. That happens now.]
The manager of the restaurant was behind the counter to accept our money but by this point, I wasn't going to let the situation go any further without mentioning something.
"I gotta tell you," I said to her. "You had no ketchup to offer with our meal and that's strange in a restaurant that effectively serves fries with every meal. To make matters worse, we were upsold some sauce when we ordered without any mention that we'd be paying for it. What's up with that?"
[HERE COMES THE CUSTOMER SERVICE ISSUE SO PAY ATTENTION]
"Oh, we HAVE ketchup. We just have little packets but you'd have to pay for them too."
I believe what this horrible restaurant manager implied was that the justification for selling us a sauce we didn't want in lieu of ketchup (which we did want) was equaled out because both actually cost us money. Getting into a discussion with her about why I would pay for ketchup was well beyond us at this point.
My problem is this:
A manager has a customer approach them with a complaint. We were given something and charged for it without knowing we were being charged. The manager could have chosen to deal with the situation in any number of ways including:
a.) Telling me to get out and never come back again
b.) Apologising for the miscommunication
c.) Apologising for the miscommunication and offering to take the $1.60 off of our bill
She effectively did none of these but hold out her hand to collect the $26 she felt was owed. In turn, she was able to automatically accomplish bullet point "a" above.
Why do I get so frustrated over situations like this, you ask?
Because it was completely avoidable. I spent money at this place all the time and now, they will not see me or my family there any longer. Is it because they didn't have ketchup? No, of course not. It's because they didn't give a shit about not having ketchup and they didn't give a shit that I wanted ketchup.
All customer service is simply about letting the customer know you give a shit about them and their experience. That is so ridiculously easy to do. Am I making the argument that customers are always right? No way...customers are often wrong and there are also plenty of them who take advantage. However, that was not the case today.
An inability to manage a situation which cost $1.60 has now led that restaurant to lose at least $1,680 of my business over the course of a year. To add to that, I have one less place to eat at in Suva. That may turn out to be the hardest part of all.
SLAP. Ok...rant over.
