Have you ever had a truly horrific customer service experience? The type that makes you consider never doing business with someone again? A few years ago, I remember my brother calling the cable company to cancel a service. They give you several different options to choose from. Push 1 to sign up for a new service, 2 to modify/cancel a service, 3 for something else, etc. He chose 2 and sat on hold for over 30 minutes. Becoming a little frustrated he decided to see what would happen if he pushed 1 (the sign-up line!). He got out his cell phone, dialed the company, pushed 1, and BAM! Immediately, someone was on the line. You can imagine the frustration. They only wanted to talk to him if he was going to give them money.
We’ve all had those experiences and we tend to share them. My wife and I had one at Boston Market a few months back. I thought I had blogged about it, but I can’t find it anywhere. It’s a long story, but it was just an unpleasant experience. The point is: We told everyone about it. We posted it on Facebook, Twitter, and told our friends. We weren’t sure if we’d ever go back.
Which brings us to tonight…
After having our second little boy 3 weeks ago, people have pitched in to make us dinners and such. We also got a Boston Market gift card. So we decided to take a trip tonight and I just had to write about our experience.
It was a complete 180!
Seriously, you would think it’s a different place. The servers were exceptionally friendly. We had $20 on our card and were trying to squeeze the most out of it that we could so I asked the cashier if we had enough for a coke. She said we only had room for one drink, but ended up giving us a second one free. Awesome.
Then, we get to our seat and I realize they had forgotten to put a corn bread on my plate. Worried this might cause conflict (I could see them doubting I didn’t get one), I went up to the counter. The same lady was up there and not only did she help me, she apologized, and gave me two pieces of corn bread!
They seemed to be going out of their way to make our visit pleasant. My last visit, I took a survey and told them about my bad experience. I plan on doing another survey and telling them how great my visit was this time. I’ve always loved their food, but the customer service has been below par. It was great to see it improve tonight. It’s easy to spread the news when bad stuff happens. A lot of times we just expect things to go right so we don’t properly recognize people for doing a good job. Hopefully, they’ll be encouraged by the positive feedback?
Ever had a great customer service experience? Did you brag on them? Did you send them positive feedback? Take some time to encourage someone this week!
Becoming Last 
I hear ya… I’ve had exceptionally bad and exceptionally good customer service. One that sticks out to me was that I had a situation arise in travelling and an airline ticket rep worked through scenarios with me on the phone for quite a while and ended up waiving several fees before it was over. I wrote her supervisor and beamed about the excellent job she did. It was great to be taken care of like that!
Great story Jason. Glad you wrote her supervisor and I’m sure she is too!