Friday, August 05, 2005

Whatever happened to customer service?

OK - I just need to vent a little... on Fridays, our office orders take out lunch together. Today, I volunteered to take the orders and do the pick up. We ordered from a fast casual restauarant (who shall remain nameless), and I gotta tell you... it was quite frustrating. Because we order for a group, we usually do a spreadsheet with everyone's name with the items they want. We fax it into the restaurant, call to confirm and get in the car and pick it up... easy... VERY easy. Well... not when the restaurant is uncooperative. Today, I tried to fax the order five times... FIVE! When I kept having trouble, I called and got put on hold... for five minutes... FIVE! I called back and got put on hold again... I called back a third time and got to speak with someone (finally), and they said "oh yeah... fax is out... I can take your order over the phone." I was not a happy camper... "We're ordering for a group," I say. "That's fine... just give me the order." "Can you put everyone's names on the items?" I ask. "Well, we're really busy." (PAUSE) "but I can write the item name on the box if that would help..." he responds. By this time I'm livid! "Fine," I snort and then spend the next ten minutes going through each individual order with the guy...

The order was correct and ready for us to pick up when we got there. The ordering process was just a beating, though. Arg! Don't these people realize that I was trying to save both me and their hourly employee time by trying to fax in an order for a large group? Don't they realize how THEY benefit from being able to know the order is correct? Don't they know that MY time is valuable, and I really don't want to spend it going over in grave detail whether someone wants chicken or tofu on their Lo Mein order???? Come on, people... get with the program. The customer is not just right... the customer is important... especially when that customer is ME!

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