How does poor customer service impact your brand?
This has been a crazy week in terms of customer service — from really great to really awful. In both cases, the service has impacted how I viewed the brand; and, in both cases, I shared my experience with others in my social network.
Word of mouth advertising has always been important, but in an age where a customer can share their experience in real time, while it’s fresh in their minds — well, let’s just say that it isn’t a wise move to offer subpar service.
Allow me to share a couple of stories with you. While either would have made for a great illustration on their own, the contrast of showing these two experiences together should really drive home the importance, and the brand implications of offering superior service.
First, the good news. Earlier this week, I set up about a half dozen aliased domains on a single hosting account with GoDaddy. This is something I’ve done several times in the past without incident — but for some reason, this time, I hit a snag. After installing WordPress to each of the domains, I still couldn’t get them to show up live.
I phoned in to GoDaddy’s customer support team, and was greeted by Jenna Dhooge. Jenna was energetic, polite, and very knowledgeable of the technical nuances of what I was doing. It took nearly an hour to get things straightened out — and during that entire time she was extremely helpful in explaining what caused the problem, and even offered to go into my control panel to make it right on my behalf. She then took the extra step of checking in on my domain portfolio to see if I had items expiring (which I did – I have hundreds of domains registered with GoDaddy). She helped me get those renewed as well.
I was so impressed with how she handled my call that I asked her if GoDaddy still sent out customer satisfaction surveys — because I wanted to be sure and share my feedback with them. She provided me with an email address for customer comments, and I promptly sent them an account of just how pleased I was. Within 12 hours, I had a personal reply from GoDaddy President & COO Warren Adelman.
That would have been fine, but I decided to take it one step further.
I proceeded to share my experience via Facebook and Twitter — for the simple reason that at a time when complaints are prevalent on the social networks, I feel that it is important to recognize great service, and share that feedback with our peer networks.
Now, for the bad news. This afternoon (the Sunday before the Super Bowl), my husband and I went out for lunch before doing some grocery shopping. We went to a neighborhood burger joint called Beach Bums. This is a privately-owned restaurant, and the atmosphere is beach and surfer inspired. We’ve been going there since they first opened (just over a year or so, I believe) — and had been pleased with the selection of gourmet burgers.
Until today.
When we entered the restaurant, there were about half a dozen tables populated with customers — it was by no means busy. We were seated, and ordered a couple of beers at 2:32pm. After 35 minutes, we inquired what had become of our order — and we were told by the server that she had “put six orders in at once.” Tables who had arrived long after us were receiving their orders, so we really began to get irritated. After 45 minutes, we finally asked for the check, and told the server we were leaving.
We waited another 10 minutes just to receive the check.
On the way out, we mentioned to the two servers standing at the counter that this was the worst service we’d ever had, and that we wouldn’t be back. They called a manager over, who said that the order had been placed at 2:54pm, and had come out at 3:14pm (where it went is anyone’s guess, as we never saw it). She then went on to tell us that she “didn’t need shi**y customers” like us anyway.
You may be wondering what culinary masterpiece we’d ordered that would warrant such a long preparation time. Well, let me clear that up for you. I ordered a veggie burger. John ordered a regular burger, but he asked for medium well. Perhaps that is what caused the delay — I guess we’ll never know.
As an aside, I should also mention that I would call this a family-friendly restaurant — well, at least it used to be. When we went in today I was really appalled by the new uniforms on the waitresses. They were dressed in skin tight white tank tops emblazoned with Beach Bums on the front, and tiny little red shorts. Believe me, the irony that we were at a restaurant called Beach Bums that would dress their wait staff so that their bums were hanging out of their shorts was not lost on me.
If I’d wanted to go to Hooters for lunch, I would have gone there. As we hadn’t been in for a few months, this new look was a bit shocking for a long-time patron.
The way the manager handled our feedback was unprofessional and unwarranted — and it served only to add insult to injury. John and I both shared our experience with our networks — and I took the extra step of listing my review at Yelp, Urban Spoon, Trip Advisor, Superpages and a few local restaurant review sites. I wanted to try to prevent any of our friends or colleagues from having a similar experience.
In looking over some of the other comments that had been submitted, it appears that I wasn’t the only recent diner to be less than impressed.
So — we have two very different situations…two very different outcomes.
In both instances, I shared my feedback, and potentially influenced a large number of people with my comments. One company clearly gets it, the other probably never will. But in both cases, the service impacted the company’s brand equity with this customer.
Oh, by the way — when we left Beach Bums we headed over to Logan’s Steak House — and in under 40 minutes we received appetizers, dinner and dessert. And the service was impeccable. We mad sure that we asked to speak to a manager — and we made sure to tell him how great our food and our service was.
The bottom line is this — whether your company’s service earns you kudos or bum wrap with customers, you only have yourself to blame.
