Customer Service

Two posts in one day! This is what happens when you have a busy weekend I guess. This post revolves around the sometimes elusive concept of customer service. Is there such a thing as too much, and at what point do you say this place sucks? A friend and I have had similar experiences recently which prompted this writing and which I will share with you now.

Great customer service is usually pretty easy to recognize. It's the person that calls you back after an order to make sure it was installed/delivered/set up correctly. It's the person that goes the extra step to find your product (and maybe have it sent over) instead of saying that since it's not physically in their store there is nothing they can do. The cashiers that remember your name, the barista's that know my coffee order so at 7 a.m. I just have to nod. These are the folks that make the term customer service a reality.

Crappy customer service is equally easy to spot. The nameless, faceless voice on the other end of the phone who puts you on hold for 10 minutes only to say, sorry the office you need closed 5 minutes ago, please call them tomorrow. The cashier's who congregate together gossiping while lines form and then never makes eye contact and screws up your order because they are too busy texting/talking/finding lost braincells. The bar tender who ignores you all night long, before you have even had a chance to tip the first round or make any kind of contact.

We have all experienced the good, the bad and the ugly when it comes to the customer service world. Where it all begins to get sticky however is in the middle zone. This is the place that you frequent because it's off the beaten path, or it's the non-corporate coffee shop in a sea of Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks. Maybe you like to support small businesses, or maybe they make the best philly cheese steak this side of the Schuylkill River. It's the place where you save your pennies each week so you can tip big when you're there. Whatever it is, whatever they sell, it's a place that you have marked as your own - so what do you do when the service starts to go downhill?

It starts small - you order a coffee and a bagel, chatting aimlessly with the guy behind the counter about the weekend and then step to the side to wait....and wait....and wait. Seems during the chatting the bagel order has slipped through some crack either physical or mental, lost either way. They see you still standing, realize their mistake and are really sorry. They quickly make it, offering many apologies and how about a cup of coffee to go with it? Well, the coffee was the one thing they already got you, so no that doesn't really do you any good. You wave off the apologies, insist it's no big deal, and move on with your day. Because it really is not a big deal in the scheme of life. It's a delayed bagel, not a lost job, not a missile aimed at your home, a bagel. And deep inside you want to give them the benefit of the doubt, you want to be one of the insiders that thinks "Hey I know these guys, they know me, it's all good", but is it?

What happens when your order starts to get forgotten on a semi regular basis? When you get it to go only to realize 45 minutes later (and already at your desk at work) that your cinnamon raisin bagel smells suspiciously like blueberries? Or when your bartender takes your presence for granted, because hell you're always there so you must not mind, and lets you sit for 15-20 minutes fiddling with an empty beer bottle while they chat away the evening with the cook, or another customer, or texting on their cell phone (Really? My cash is not better than a text message?).

The last thing you want to do is be "That Customer". The one they bitch about when they see you through the glass. You want to empathize and sympathize and all the other izes you can think of. You want to be a part of the working machine, part of the inner circle. Maybe you've worked this kind of job, or something similar, you know how much of a prick most folks can be, and hell you have even vowed to never be like that.

But at some point it happens. At some point the voice inside your head says "Yup, this job probably pays crap. And the hours undoubtedly are no fun. But in the end it is your job to give me coffee/beer/product of any kind and right now you suck at it". What do you do when you reach that point? When the "cool" factor of the institution is drowned out by the annoyingness of having your order messed up, your presence forgotten? Do you abandon your territory? Do you stand up and say something risking being moved into a new category of customer? Do you swallow it and wait and blog about it in the meantime?