For V-Day my friend and I ordered our boyfriends "Say-it-in-writing" sugar cookies. On each cookie is a letter and it spells out whatever the customer wants. It is $1.25 per cookie as well as a set up fee of $4.95 as well as shipping. Based on the pictures on the website we believed that the cookies were normal sized. It wasn't until after receiving them that we realized the cookies were the size of nickels.
My friend emailed them saying "Hi. I recently bought personalized cookies from you for my boyfriend for valentines day. I was very dissappointed to find out exactly how small they were. After seeing the cookies, I viewed your website and I finally saw that it says bite size beside the description. By the pictures and reviews on tv, I believed they were the size of a regular sugar cookie. I am very unhappy that I spent so much money on something I thought was a lot bigger. Please state on your website in bigger font and visable to your viewers exactly how small the cookies are. Please also take pictures of the items that do not fool your audience into believing something else. Thank you."
To our dismay she recieved this response. "WOW...I am surprised. I have never heard this before. I have written on the description many times regarding the size of the cookie being 1" and bite size. The front page of the category and the product itself. There is also a picture of a women holding a box of them. How is this fooling people? Sorry for your confusion. "
Hillary Souza
So my question is, where is the customer service? Where is the hospitality? As a person in a management position at my job I know that even if a customer is wrong, there still needs to be a level of professionalism when helping them with their discrepencies. I spent 30 bucks and she spent over $50 (because of shipping) only to be disappointed and then disrespected. When people say that chivalry is dead they are speaking a lot of truth. It is rare that we encounter customer service where the employee doesn't seem to be aggrivated or uninterested. A goal at the shop I work at is to always acknowledge every customer. We have had people tell us that they appreciate our help and that it is hard to come by these days. We have even had people come to our shop telling us that at the shop they went to before hand, the employees didn't even acknowledge their presence.
I want to always make customers feel as if they are just as important as the next person. I believe it is important to also have this mentality in our daily lives. We should always strive to show everyone equal attention and respect, regardless of the situation.
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I completely agree that customer appreciation is gone in almost all restaurants/stores I encounter. I've noticed especially in the drive-thru places. Up until very recently the people that worked in the Taco Bell that I frequent were complete jerks. I like to hear a "Hi, how are you doing?" and I typically respond, "Hey, great! How are you?" and then continue on to my order.
ReplyDeleteThe people that used to work there (or maybe still do and got grilled by their bosses) never said anything nice, they just wanted my order ASAP. Lately though, I've actually thanked the people at the window for being so polite. Maybe the world will learn to be nicer.
To receive a customer complaint like the one your friend wrote, it was very unprofessional for someone to write back with what they did. I work at a Sticky Fingers in town, if any of us as servers do anything whatsoever wrong with an order, we get our manager who makes sure the guest is happy when they leave.
ReplyDeleteActually on Friday night, my coworker had a table of an older couple while he was training a new girl. A woman ordered a full slab of ribs and after eating HALF of the slab, she complained to her server that it was too grizzly and the thin back part of the ribs (which is on every rib) was gross. My manager promptly went over and apologized to her. My manager also offered anything else she might want for no extra charge and she said she wanted another slab of ribs! Then when my coworker tried to take away the remaining part of the ribs that she complained about, she said no and wanted a box!!! So this woman who didn’t like our style of ribs, walked out with a slab and a ½ of ribs for no charge. If I ever saw customer service, that was it. I couldn’t believe people who take advantage of complaints like she did (little off topic).
Back to what your blog, It was wrong how the customer service handled your friends complaint and places should handle it more like my restaurant and others handle those types of situations. Also, I cannot believe you guys spent money for cookies that said stuff on it. Wouldn’t it have been cheaper if you made sugar cookies and wrote on each one with icing yourself? Plus it is hard to argue, when I took a look at the site and saw that it said that they are an inch and a quarter big. I hoped your boyfriends liked the cookies in the end!
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ReplyDeleteThats terrible. Hopefully the cookies tasted good. But i would agree that customer service has gone out the window. With the tough times I feel that people are being stressed out and take customer service out. Most businesses today are struggling any ways it doesnt make sense to ugly to your customers. Hopefully they will understand you complaint and somehow change their advertising. And your valentines day turned out well, even with the small cookies.
ReplyDeleteThe experience you have just relayed is ridiculous! I have worked in the service industry for over 5 years (time and Chick-Fil-A and also waiting tables), and when presented with this type of situation there are so many better ways to go about it. The first thing any manager in the service industry teaches you is that the customer is always right. That being said, the email response you received should have been apologetic and offered some sort of reconciliation for the problem. Like I said, ridiculous!
ReplyDeleteMy guess is this website will probably go out of business. If you really fell like you have been ripped off call your credit card company and tell them you were mislead and would like the charge taken off. Not only will you get your money back, but that company will get a charge back of $10-25 and there will be nothing they can do about it. I would next register a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. This may or may not help, but enough bad complaints will put them out of business.
ReplyDeleteFor as long as the service industry has existed, you would think everyone would know how to treat a customer. The experience you went through is just terrible. My friends and I recently had a bad experience at a restaurant that is normally very pleasant. My friend didn't like the chicken in her food, she thought it tasted funny. She wanted to tell the waiter right away but he didn't come back for a long time. In fact, he hardly came by to check on us once throughout our meal. So when she explained to him at the end of the meal that she didn't like the food he told her nothing was wrong with the food and then when accused of ignoring us, he denied and said he had been by a lot. It was very irritating. Finally, we were able to get the manager and he made amends. I just can't believe a waiter or salesperson would tell a customer they were wrong when everyone knows "the customer is always right."
ReplyDeleteWow, I cannot believe that they had the audacity to be so rude via email about the very polite letter that your friend wrote. They had no grounds do that and it really show’s what kind of business they are running, a complete populist one, where they do not care about customers or the information being presented, only profit. But profit will stop when you treat people like that! I wrote the same thing about chivalry being dead and common curtsey is gone, especially at restaurants regarding quick turn over’s like drive through windows. I understand our world is in this huge rush all the time, and no cares to take the .2 of a second to say please or thank anymore, but now a days they just throw your food at you while your car is still rolling and don’t even bat an eyelash. I think a huge key to our cold nature is our generation’s constant need to be on the go, FAST! I hope things change some day….
ReplyDeleteYou are exactly right! A customer, regardless if they are wonderful, crazy or just plain mean, is always right. They are the reason that there is a business at all. Their payment, pays for the bills and I think you and your friend should have definately been treated better.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand I think that was a very nice thing you 'attempted' to do for your guy. Regardless of the dime sized drag, I hope you had a great Valentines day with you boy.
If more people were like you, the retail industry would improve drastically. You're right that too frequently customer service goes out the window and companies seem to care less and less about how the customer feels. And especially since the cookies were so expensive, you would think they could give you some sort of discount. But this also speaks to another problem with shopping...the ambiguity of online shopping. Without actually seeing the product first hand, it is difficult to know exactly what you are getting. And companies know this, and often take advantage of it. It was good that your friend wrote a letter though. Companies like that need to know when they deceived a customer.
ReplyDelete