So, I'm on the road a few days ago, with no time to stop for lunch. I pull into a large national burger chain- to protect their anonymity I'll call them Shmuckdonald's- and order a couple of burgers and a tea, for a total of $4.09.
About a week ago a very small hole formed in the magnetic strip on the back of my debit card, making it impossible for some credit card terminals to process my card. We are switching banks next week, so we decided not to order a new card, and the merchants whose terminals can't read the card just punch it in manually.
Not Shmuckdonald's.
I watched through the window as several different employees took turns furiously swiping my card. After everyone in the group had taken a whack at it a large man in a button down shirt appeared. He swiped the card a few times, and handed it back to the girl working the window.
"I'm sorry, but your card won't work," She explained.
"It works fine, you just have to enter it manually," I replied.
She closed the window, said something to Button down shirt, who simply shook his head. Back to me.
"Our system isn't set up to do that. Sorry. Do you have another way to pay?"
"No, I don't. I'm coming back through in two hours. I can get some cash from my wife and Pay you then."
She shuts the door, talks to button down (who at this point really should have gotten involved in the conversation. Who asks to run a tab at a burger chain? The fact that I was doing just that should have alerted button down that he was dealing with an oddball, and maybe it was time for him to get involved.
Nope. Button down shook his head a second time, and window girl comes back to say,
"Sorry. Since your card won't work you'll have to pay some other way."
"How can you guys not......never mind," not being the kind of guy that wails on the hired help, I drive off, with a bad taste in my mouth.
CUT TO- Me, at the next burger chain down the road, happily munching on a double cheeseburger.
First off, if its true that Shmuckdonald's POS system doesn't allow manual entry of debit cards, that is an epic fail on their part. How many times have you been in line at store and watched the clerk punch in the card details of a customer in front of you. And Shmuckdonald's has no method for people in that situation to be able to use their card?
But the real failure in my mind was committed by button down. Shmuckdonald's spends tens of millions of dollars every year to get me into their business. His owner spent around a million on the franchise. And he can't get creative enough to find a way to provide me a four dollar meal.
Say I don't come back to pay for it. He has a drawer or a pocket short four dollars. Instead, because I'm a customer that holds a grudge, I will avoid that particular Shmuckdonald's like the plague. And I have already told this story four times today- once to a leads group with 18 people in it. That telling evolved into a 15 minute topper exercise, with everyone relating their worst experience with Shmuckdonald's customer service.
Hire creative, empathetic people, and give them the authority to solve your customer's problems. Unless your ad budget is as large as Shmuckdonald's.
That's the bad. Part Two, the good, will come later in the week.
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