A few days ago my wife and I had a fun-filled experience I wanted to share with you as a lesson of how to NOT run your business. Whether online, like most of you are, or offline (like we experienced) take heed.
The Pizza Saga Begins
It was a Friday night and my sister-in-law and her kids came over to play some Wii-U and hangout with my wife, my son and I.
We and the kids were getting hungry so we ordered in some pizza. What goes better than Mario and a good slice of pizza, right?
The pizza company is fairly new to town and we’ve probably ordered from them 15 times in the last year. On the phone we were told it’d be 45 minutes for our pizza and on a Friday night we understood.
After waiting for an hour we started wondering where they were. Hey, 15 minutes last isn’t horrible and things happen so I let it go. About 15 minutes later, still nothing.
So my sister-in-law picks up the cellphone and calls to inquire about our order. After asking when we can expect the order she was handed off to someone (presumably the owner or manager) who then told us that the delivery girl was lost.
No GPS? No map? In 2012/2013? Look, we don’t live underground in a military industrial complex here.
Not to mention this was the 15th time or so they’ve been here. Something wasn’t adding up.
By this point we’re about an hour and 20 minutes into waiting for the food.
She kindly reminded them that they said it’d be out in 45 minutes and that they’re running extremely late. He simply said “well’ whoever told you that shouldn’t have told you 45 minutes, that’s not my fault.”
News flash, when it’s your business, everything is your fault. If you manage a business, everything is your fault.
At the 1:35 mark finally our food arrives. It was the same delivery person, who has been to our house at least a half dozen times. Lost? No way.
Immediately looking at the boxes I notice that there is sauce all over freaking covering the outside of the box, literally dripping from it.
So, my wife calls in to them, explaining that we just called a few moments ago and our food has finally arrived but there is sauce all over the boxes. Meanwhile I opened the boxes only to find that the entire contents of the stromboli dish had been completely dumped out all over the inside of the box. There was barely anything left in the sauce pan.
Here’s a nice pic of that junk.
Then I opened the pizza and the pizza was all slid to one side and mangled.
Here’s a pic of that junk too.
Good God! You’ve got to be kidding me!!
So, she mentioned to the manager that our food was ruined. In which he replied “What! Did she drop it or something?” Sir I don’t know but we can’t eat this.
He continued to say “I guess I’ll make new and bring it out.”
Good thing he seemed extra sincere.
She asked if it’d be 2 hours again. O.K. side note; by this point she’s pissed and I would have said something far worse than that.
He said “ I don’t know, it’ll get there as soon as we can, you’re not the only customers we have tonight.”
Those lucky “additional “customers must be having a swell time too!
Immediately, without question my wife hit the end call button and stated we’d never order from there again. I however, wanted to see what the guy would do.
A). Would he come out himself and apologize?
B). Send coupons and come out and apologize?
C). At least send coupons or vouchers for free food with the delivery girl?
D). Perhaps send a different delivery person as to avoid stress for everyone involved.
The answer?
E. Send the same delivery girl, without coupons/vouchers/without apology….
That is when I decided we were really done with them. I don’t care if they made the best food on Earth; we were done with them for good.
I told their delivery girl to take back a message to her boss. It was simply; we will never order from your company again.
That’s probably a lot of money seeing how we order pizza at least twice per month. But, if it was just us it might be live-able. Note: Cue the surreal foreshadowing music.
After we finally ate my wife immediately posted the awesome pictures to Facebook for all of our friends to see. After all, many of our friends eat in the same places and do the same things we do.
Do you think they’ll think twice about ordering rom there? You bet.
Upon posting the pictures, comments started coming in immediately with people who have had the same or similar experiences.
Do you think the people who see that 25 other people had a bad experience with a company would choose them in the future? No way.
This is why, especially in this day and age, that when you are running a business (even if it’s just a website) that it’s critical to handle any issues immediately and take ownership.
It’s also important that you do not promote crappy products. If you tell someone that something is great and it’s lousy, they won’t appreciate it.
How do you think people who order a really crappy “get rich” product feels? Do you think they’ll ever trust the site that promoted it? What will they tell their friends, family and social media?
This is why what you promote matters as much as how you run your website.
Take ownership of your business no matter what your website promotes. Interact socially with your website and take care of problems and you’ll be better off for it. Remove products that are suddenly junky or warn your visitors about it.
Of course, like all businesses, you’ll always get that one person that is loud, rude and yelling over nothing. But, politely send them on their way and always keep your composure.
You’re never going to please everyone but, you need to please the majority. If the majority starts having the same experience you’ll soon be sitting in an empty room all by yourself.
Lastly, I won’t name the company as most of you do not live near me, nor am I vindictive as I wish the company no harm. I actually hope they change their ways and straighten their business out. However, they will permanently be doing it without us and probably most of our friends who live in the area.
Have an awesome experience to share? How did you handle it? What are your thoughts?
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About Michael Brown
We have some people in the IT deparent that will go out of their way to pass a call back to the help desk because the of a R in the month and not just pick up the phone and call the user to help fix the user problem this just drives me mad. I just wish to work for myself so badley.
Ha, yea that’s bad team work within a company and poor customer service. Are you over at http://www.nicheoptimizer.com with Justin and I, yet?
Michael, you are absolutly right. If it was me (the owner), I would have come over personally and your food would have been on the house. Treat others as you would like to be treated. One can catch more bees with honey then with vinegar, an old greek saying. It may lose some translation but the just is there. I'm trying to gain as much knowledge as I can, following you around so to speak before I start my web sites. I get home late and am exhausted after being with hubby but I'm trying to make time even though it's kinda late for me. Thank you for your wisdom. Katie
Love the story. It's true that in today's social connected world, poor service will spread like wildfire all over the internet. Great service may get a mention. Was looking for the name of the company, you are too kind to not share it but then again liable could be a problem. Yelp can get your ear. I did get hungry reading this.
I am on the web site but not in the Now University yet. Just gone over most of your videos and found that you have updated some of them and also found that my web site was not ranked within google now fixed because of your video.How do I get my site ranked with other web ranking site?.
Clay,
Many of the people who contacted my wife and I already guessed the establishment. The interesting thing was/is they already had similar experiences.
You do bring up an interesing point though. You metioned that great service may get a mention. The sad fact is we prbably do not compliment the businesses that treat us well, enough. But, if a business goes out of it’s way to make you happy I think we’re more inclined to mention what they did for us. Great service gets a menton while good to very good service doesn’t. I think as consumers it would be helpful for everyone if we did give those great services a mention more. After poor service it definately makes me think twice
Katie,
I love the old “more bees with honey line”because it’s so true.
Also, just try to set aside at least 30 minutes per day for your biz if you can. I know it’s tough, especially given your current situation. Getting the site up and running is the hardest part when you’re time strapped. What you can do is take one day to find your niche and then the next day dedicate yourself to just getting the site up. On day 3 configure the site and then day 4 get your first piece of content up. Even if it’s just a short post about what your site is about, it helps.
Philbert,
You mean other search engines like Bing? Usually these search engines will find you. Bing has it’s own web tools program that is somewhat like Google’s. I actually like it more.
http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster Just signup and add your site.
Fellow Ohio man. I don't live up on your side of the state but having
pizza experience like you did has happened here too.
Being a past business owner and now an online business owner if there is a right
or wrong answer what I would have done is
sent a new pizza, free of charge, the same girl, ASAP to you, the coupon for
your next order. I the manager or owner
would have stayed at the front lines where the war is not the battle off to the
side, you guys.
It sounds like the person you, your wife, spoke with might have been promoted to
commander to soon and will be
defeated, their war will be lost by them and the crust is left for the rats.
Thanks
Chuck,
Too true. It’s a smaller company so it may have even been the owner (still not 100% sure). If it was the owner there is 0% chance of them turning that ship around.
Thanks for the visit and keep growing your business.
Michael
I could not have said it better. A true lesson in life.
– If you build it, they will come, but if you don't build it right, they will not return.
– If you screw up, they will know and tell their friends – so admit what you did wrong and fix it.
Bob
Bob,
I like this…
Great words to live by…
Unfortunately Micheal this senerio happens way too often in this day and age! It seems that so many people today are soooo money hungry that they could care less about providing great or even half ass service to their customers. Excuse my language, but incidents like this get my blood pressure up! You know, my Dad had a retail store years ago. He started the business in the late 40's and it was quite different back then. The customer was "King" and you did everything you could possibly do to keep your customers happy and coming back. I worked for him for 20 years, up until Dad sold the business, but the most important thing I learned about business from Dad was, that service is 90% of what makes your business succeed! If you don't have great service, you don't have a business! Thanks again Michael, great post!
Jim,
Congrats on what your dad accomplished! I've spoken to many people about service from the 50's and 60's and they all say very similar things to what you just said. Back then people wanted to make money to provide for teir families but they knew that doing so, meant treating your customers like gold. The companies that stay with that thought process in the new era will eventually win out IMO.
As money gets tighter in a down economy the way the average person is treated will once again matter greatly.
Unlike years go when you could actually get away with bad service, now everyone will hear about it. Though, as you mentioned, back then more businesses focused on the customer and less about "averages." I.e. "if we piss off 20,000 people it's O.K. because we have 2.5 million customers per year."
I think we are going to need to see the "customer is king" mindset return in a big way, as D.C. looks more broken then ever and the economy does not look like it's coming back anytime soon. When money becomes a huge object, losing the customers that give you money is more painful, even to large companies.
Much respect to your father for running a business in the era when I believe the majority of us were harder and stronger and looking to make a difference with the businesses we created as well as put food on our tables.
Great comments, Jim.
Excellent service is so important. I went into a fast food business once to buy something for lunch. I stood in the line, and wait my turn to be served. But when I got the the front, the lady start serving the customer behind me. And then the next one behind me. At that point I asked her if maybe I'm invisable, because I came all the way from the back, and once it was my turn she started with the people behind me. And that was the first, and the last time I set foot in that place. Even if people are telling me they are the best fast food joint in town, my reaction is…..thank you, but no thank you…..
Maggie,
Thanks for sharing. Unfortunately, this attitude in fast food is usually passed down from the manager or owner to the employee. If either would simply make getting a certain task correct a priority your experience probably would have never happened in a negative way.
Like you said, when someone takes your money then you expect them to at least act like they care and take ownership of mistakes insted of making excuses and pushing blame. Took your money pretty fast huh,,,,,,Then diden't deliver on the service and or what they promised. They might have delivered, but IT was not what you expected.
I REALLY know that feeling.
David L
The story of good service / bad service reminds me me that years ago I used to have a business card that had the normal contact details on the front, but on the back I had the following slogan.
"If you have had a great service, please tell others, if you have had a poor service tell me FIRST"
The amount of comments I got from this was great customer feedback, even had a a shop keeper ask if he could use it and had signs hung above all his checkouts with the same slogan.
Good news travels fast, bad news travels FASTER
Robert
Robert,
Great quote!
"If you have had a great service, please tell others, if you have had a poor service tell me FIRST"